The Effects of an After-school Garden Club for Fourth Graders Regarding Fruit and Vegetable Nutrition

Abstract

An eight-lesson gardening and nutrition curriculum with a hands-on gardening emphasis was taught as an after-school program to determine the effect it had on increasing children's nutrition knowledge, fruit and vegetable (F&V) preference, and improving children's self-efficacy (SE) and outcome expectations (OE) for gardening and for consuming fruit and vegetables. Seventeen fourth-grade students participated in the experimental group as part of an after-school gardening club, and 21 fourth-grade students served as the control group. Nutrition knowledge; F&V preference; SE; OE; as well as demographic measures were obtained at baseline and end-program. There were no differences in nutrition knowledge scores between or within groups at baseline or at end-program. However, baseline scores were high (>7 out of 10 possible) for both groups. Both groups indicated a high preference for fruit at baseline and end-program. Vegetable preference did not increase over the course of the program for either group. At baseline, measurements of gardening SE and OE were significantly different between the groups, and during the length of the study the control group significantly increased in their gardening SE and OE while the experimental group maintained their high SE and OE for gardening. Some possible explanations for these unexpected findings could be recruitment effect and seasonal change. Further research to clarify which aspects of gardening (i.e., season, harvesting, crops grown) have the greatest impact on influencing preference, SE and OE of fourth-grade children is needed.