Lessons From Los Angeles, California: School And Community Gardens And Childhood Obesity Prevention

Abstract

Introduction: Community- and school-level environmental interventions such as community and school gardens with associated nutrition education programs may impact individual level changes in dietary behaviors and intake. We hypothesized that children and their families participating in one of two Los Angeles (LA)-based garden projects would have improvements in health- and behavioral-associated outcomes over time. Methods: LA Sprouts was a randomized control trial that built gardens at four elementary schools in food desert neighborhoods in LA. Two schools were randomized to intervention (172, 3rd-5th grade students) and two to control (147, 3rd-5th grade students). Nutrition/cooking and gardening classes were taught in 90-minute sessions once a week to each grade level for 12 weeks. Data collected at pre- and post-intervention included dietary intake via food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), anthropometric measures [BMI, waist circumference (WC)], body fat, and fasting blood samples. The Little Green Fingers project is building eight community gardens across LA County to serve the 0-5 population and their families. Each garden provides gardening classes taught by a master gardener and cooking classes taught by a nutritionist. As of January 1, 2015, 121 families with 71 children aged 0-5 have agreed to participate in an evaluation study. Adults complete a questionnaire and children have BMI measured at baseline, 6 months, and 1 year from joining the garden. Results: LA Sprouts participants had significantly greater reductions in BMI z-scores (0.1 versus 0.04 point decrease, respectively; p=0.01) and WC (-1.2 cm vs. no change; p