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Children's eating habits are influenced by numerous social and individual factors. The present study aimed to evaluate the connection between nutrition knowledge of children and their eating habits as well as their attitudes towards healthy eating habits.

The research study included 630 11-year-old children from 27 randomly selected Slovenian schools. During the research, children attended the sixth grade of the nine-year elementary school and on average were subject to 38.6 h of mandatory nutritional contents, which are planned in the curriculum of home economics. At the end of the school year, nutrition knowledge was checked with a knowledge test consisting of 27 questions. Considering the achieved results, children were classified into three knowledge categories: low, fairly good, and good nutrition knowledge. Children's eating habits were assessed with a food-frequency questionnaire, while the five-degree Likert scale was used to assess their attitudes to healthy eating habits. Differences in children's eating habits and attitudes in reference to the category of knowledge were determined through analysis of variance.

The results demonstrated that children with better nutrition knowledge have healthier eating habits and a more positive attitude towards them than children with poor nutrition knowledge.

The study results demonstrate the link between children's nutrition knowledge and attitudes on the one hand and eating habits on the other which justifies the importance of providing formal and informal nutrition education to children.

The purpose of this paper is to establish where four‐year old children think certain basic foods come from. The authors explored how much children can learn about the origin of food through outdoor activities in the garden at preschool and on local farms.

An experiment was conducted with a control and an experimental group, which consisted of 32 children each. Before activities the authors used semi‐structured interviews about the source of food for both groups to explore children's prior knowledge. The experimental group practised activities at local farms and in their small vegetable garden. Then the authors repeated the semi‐structured interviews about the source of food for both groups.

Before their experience on the farms, many children had no idea where food comes from (milk 62 per cent, eggs 47 per cent, juice 78 per cent, and beans 84 per cent), while afterwards children in the experimental group showed a statistically significant improvement in their knowledge about the origin of food. Most children could tell us exactly where milk (84 per cent), eggs (84 per cent), juice (69 per cent), and beans (84 per cent) come from.

The paper concludes that through outdoor activities on farms and in the garden, even preschool children can learn that food comes from living beings.