Mindful Eating Programme for Childhood Obesity Prevention (MEPCOP): A longitudinal study of Mindfulness-Based Psychoeducational Intervention

Abstract

Objectives To objective of this study was to develop, implement and analyse the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based psychoeducational intervention to prevent childhood obesity by improving eating habits.

Methods A psychoeducational study was carried out over 6 months involving 207 children aged 7 to 11 years, following a pre-post design with a follow-up phase and a control group. The intervention was the implementation of the Mindful Eating Programme for Childhood Obesity Prevention (MEPCOP), aimed at improving children’s eating behaviour. The programme comprised eight sessions of one hour each, which were held in classrooms of different primary schools. Several split-plot analyses of variance were performed including adherence to the mediterranean diet (MD), mindfulness skills (MS) and mindful eating (ME), awareness (AS) and mindless eating (MLS) as dependent variables, the treatment (experimental or control group) as the between factor and the points in time measurement (pre-test, post-test and follow-up) as the within factor.

Results Adherence to the mediterranean diet improved and mindfulness skills increased after the implementation of the intervention programme, while mindless eating decreased.

Conclusions The results showed that MEPCOP was effective in improving children’s eating behavior. Further studies are needed to confirm and support the generalisability of these results.