Learning About Healthy Nutrition by Doing: Experiential Approaches in School-Based Nutrition Education

Background: Schools are widely recognized as key settings for promoting healthy eating behaviors and supporting childhood obesity prevention. In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to experiential and interactive nutrition education strategies designed to actively engage children and adolescents in food-related learning processes. These approaches move beyond traditional didactic teaching and include practical and participatory formats, such as cooking activities, school gardening, digital or app-based learning tools, workshops and educational camps, and game-based learning interventions. Objective: This narrative review aims to provide an overview of experiential school-based nutrition education interventions, describing the main types of programs implemented in school settings and summarizing their reported effects on nutrition knowledge, attitudes, and eating behaviors among children and adolescents. Results: Across intervention studies and systematic reviews, hands-on and interactive educational models, including cooking classes, gardening programs, digital learning tools, workshops or camps, and board game-based interventions, frequently report improvements in nutrition knowledge, attitudes toward food, food-related skills, and self-efficacy. These programs seek to strengthen food literacy by combining experiential learning with educational content delivered within the school environment. Evidence regarding changes in dietary intake, diet quality, and anthropometric outcomes is more heterogeneous, with some studies reporting improvements in eating behaviors and others showing more modest or short-term effects. Program outcomes appear to be influenced by several contextual factors, including intervention duration, curriculum integration, teacher involvement, and the availability of resources supporting implementation. Conclusions: Experiential and interactive approaches represent an increasingly adopted strategy in school-based nutrition education. Their effectiveness appears to depend on the quality of implementation, the degree of integration within the school curriculum, and the broader educational context. Future research should further explore how different experiential formats can be optimally integrated into school systems to support the development of food literacy and sustainable healthy eating behaviors among children and adolescents.