Evaluation of effectiveness of health education of food nutritional labels for middle school students in Minhang district of Shanghai

Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of health education of food nutritional labels for middle school students,and to provide references for the improvement of the KAP.Methods Two junior high schools and two senior high schools were chosen from all the public schools in Minhang district of Shanghai by random cluster sampling.Among the four schools,one junior high school and one senior high school were chosen as intervention group randomly(428),and the remained schools were chosen as control group(562).Health education of food nutritional labels was carried out for intervention group and effectiveness of intervention was evaluated at last.Results The KAP of intervention group was better than that of control group after intervention,and it was also better than that before intervention(P<0.05).The total awareness rate of food nutritional labels was changed from 72.9% to 96.6% after intervention in the intervention group(x2 =45.730,P =0.000).At the same time,the rate of thinking that food nutritional labels were necessary increased from 81.9% before intervention to 95.7% after intervention(x2 =19.938,P<0.01).The rates of reading and reference were changed from 41.6%,32.1% to 59.9%,42.5% separately(x2 =14.279,4.937,P<0.05).Conclusion Conducting various health education of food nutritional labels in schools can effectively and positively increase the recognition,attitude and application of food nutritional labels observably in the students.