Childhood obesity and prevention: nutrition, cooking, and gardening learning approach for an educational intervention program to increase fruit and vegetable knowledge, preference, and consumption among elementary children

BACKGROUND: This was an experimental study to determine whether a garden based nutrition curriculum would influence knowledge, preference, and fruit and vegetable consumption among elementary children. ❧ METHODS: The study was conducted at the afterschool program at Boys & Girls Club, City of Stanton and approved by the University of Southern California Institutional Review Board. The participants for this study were divided into an experimental group and a control group. Twenty students participated in the intervention program and completed the 12-week afterschool program. Meanwhile, twenty, fourth to sixth grade students from the Anaheim Achieve afterschool program, who were not enrolled in the intervention program, served as the control group. The Boys & Girls Club participants received weekly 75 minute, interactive classes for 12 consecutive weeks during January to April 2016. The nutrition, cooking and gardening curriculum were used from the LA Sprouts web-site with the permission of Dr. Gatto, the Director of the LA Sprouts. A questionnaire was used to determine pre-post differences. It consisted of five subscales assessing participants’ fruit, vegetable consumption per day, dietary assessment, background information, and family eating habits. ❧ RESULTS: Compared to pre-measures in the experimental group, after the intervention, the participants of the experimental group ate more fruits on average day (2.13 vs. 3.17; p=.001); vegetables (2.38 vs. 2.81; p=.088); spinach (1.29 vs. 1.86; p=.026); wheat bread (1.56 vs. 2.31; p=.009), and exercised more on average (2.75 vs. 3.42; p=0.039). There were significant differences between the control and experiment responses for family eating habits. Participants in the experimental group had household members encouraging them to eat vegetables less often than their counterparts in the control group, but ate peas/lima beans more often and eggs less often per day. ❧ CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that the garden based nutrition program resulted in significant positive changes in nutrition knowledge, preferences, and consumption among elementary children. Further study needs to be conducted to determine the long-term impact.