The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a nutrition education program to prevent breakfast skipping for elementary school children. Subjects were 102 5th grade students (51 boys, 51 girls) as the "education group" and 200 5th grade students (102 boys, 98 girls) as the "non-education group." The nutrition education program consisted of 4 lessons over an 8-week period. Teaching materials, including flash animation, panel, PowerPoint, and a bingo game, were developed for this education program. After education, there was significant increase in the percentage of students who had eaten breakfast every day, understood that breakfast has a great effect on health, and will eat breakfast every day in the education group compared to non-education group. Parents' positive behavior toward daily breakfast preparation and the percentage of parents who had their children eat breakfast every day increased significantly. The students of the education group responded positively to the questions of the benefit and importance of nutrition education. The flash animation received high marks, especially in terms of understanding of contents, content clarity, emphasis of the core content, delivery of necessary knowledge, and applicability of breakfast. This study shows the effectiveness of a 4-lesson nutrition education taught during an 8-week time period to induce changes in recognizing the importance of breakfast and in behavior toward breakfast consumption.
Breakfast ; Child ; Humans ; Parents ; Teaching Materials

Chronic immobilization stress (CIS) induces low levels of glutamate (Glu) and glutamine (Gln) and hypoactive glutamatergic signaling in the mouse prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is closely related to the Glu-Gln cycle. A Gln-supplemented diet ameliorates CIS-induced deleterious changes. Here, we investigated the effects of CIS and Gln supplementation on Glu-Gln cycle-related proteins to characterize the underlying mechanisms. Using the CIS-induced depression mouse model, we examined the expression of 11 proteins involved in the Glu-Gln cycle in the PFC. CIS decreased levels of glutamate transporter 1 (GLT1) and sodium-coupled neutral amino acid transporter (SNAT) 1, SANT2, SNAT3, and SNAT5. Gln supplementation did not affect the non-stressed group but significantly increased GLT1 and SNATs of the stressed group. By immunohistochemical analysis, we confirmed that SNAT1 and SNAT2 were decreased in neurons and GLT1, SNAT3, and SNAT5 were decreased in astrocytes in the medial PFC of the stressed group, but Gln-supplemented diet ameliorated these decrements. Collectively, these results suggest that CIS may cause depressive-like behaviors by decreasing Glu and Gln transportation in the PFC and that a Gln-supplemented diet could prevent the deleterious effects of CIS.
Amino Acid Transport System X-AG ; Amino Acid Transport Systems ; Animals ; Astrocytes ; Depression ; Depressive Disorder ; Diet ; Glutamic Acid ; Glutamine ; Immobilization ; Mice ; Neurons ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Transportation