Educational Interventions Relating to Breakfast Consumption among Students: A Systematic Review

Implementing interventions in the field of breakfast consumption and subsequently evaluating them is an appropriate solution to promote healthy breakfast consumption and improve health status. The present study aims to systematically investigate the educational interventions in relation to breakfast consumption among students.
In this study, the SID, IRANMEDEX, IRANDOC, ISI Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases were systematically searched for the period from January 2000 to March 2018. The selection criteria for final articles include having as their topics education and intervention relating to breakfast consumption among pre-school and other school students as well as the availability of the full text of the articles.
In general, 3742 articles were identified, out of which 17 articles—containing educational intervention relating to breakfast consumption among the students—were selected after removing duplicate articles and articles that did not meet the inclusion criteria. However, 5451 students had participated in the 17 investigated articles. The main emphasis in these interventions was on increasing breakfast consumption and knowledge and changing attitudes towards breakfast and its benefits.
The use of theories and models for intervention increased the frequency of breakfast consumption among the students in all the reviewed studies. Accordingly, it seems necessary to design, implement, and assess more educational and interventional programs. More attention should be devoted to different theories and models of health education and promotion and to some lesser noteworthy factors, such as the role of schools, teachers, and parents in education, and modern communication technologies.