1. The Impact of a School Garden and Cooking Program on Boys’ and Girls’ Fruit and Vegetable Preferences, Taste Ratings, and Intake Lily Dickson October 30, 2012

2. Eating fruits and vegetables is beneficial against: Obesity Cardiovascular disease Cancers Children’s intake is not meeting the recommended serving amount In Australia- Half of children consume at least one serving 1: 5 children consume at least two servings Internationally, <50% of children consume fruits or vegetables daily Influencing factors include availability, accessibility, and parent modeling The Health of Children

3. Experiment Background Based out of New South Wales, Australia Evidence that school gardens improve fruit and vegetable preferences/ consumption Boys have been shown to have lower preferences and intake than girls Purpose: to observe gender in the intake, willingness to taste, and taste ratings with the association of a school garden and a nutrition curriculum Hypothesis: a hands on garden-nutrition education curriculum would be more effective in boys than girls when compared with a nutrition education program alone

4. Participants in Study 127 5 th and 6 th graders from two schools Three Groups: -nutrition educations only (NE) 49% boys -nutrition education and participation in school garden (NE+G) 57% boys -control 56% Experiment done for 10 weeks with pre and post intervention assessments

5. Nutrition Education (NE) Curriculum with topics including: Nutrition Requirements of the body Plant biology Three one-hour lessons in the classroom Newsletters sent out to parents Parent participation

6. Gardening Program (NE+G) Garden participation in addition to classroom nutrition education 45 minutes, 4 times/week in the garden Children planted, weeded, watered, harvested, and managed pests This group also produced a cookbook and participated in kitchen based activities

7. Methods Pre and post intervention preference measurements Included: 5 food item food preference assessment- asked if they were willing to taste each of six vegetables (carrot, pea, tomato, broccoli, capsicum, and lettuce) if willing to try, rated the vegetable -ratings: I really liked it   I really didn’t like it -1 point for each vegetable they were willing to try (6 points possible) -5 points possible for each vegetable (max 30pts) Used a 24 hour recall at the pre and 16 week post intervention

8. Results

9. Results of Boys and Girls Statistical significant found for: Overall willingness to taste Overall taste rating Taste rating of: peas, broccoli, tomatoes, and lettuce

10. Results Boys Girls

11. Discussion Original hypothesis was false-- girls had more significant results than boys No consistent improvements found in willingness to taste for individual vegetables by gender or group, but overall willingness to try improved with both genders Larger differences were seen between NE+G and control group than differences between NE+G and NE Girls showed strongest difference between NE+G and NE Girls almost doubled that of boys with the differences between NE +G and the control group Possible reasons that girls experienced a greater impact: teacher characteristics parental/family modeling food availability gender socialization in relation to activities such a cooking and gardening

12. Conclusion Experiment showed good results in the improvements of children’s fruit and vegetable consumption with the use of a garden and a nutrition curriculum Possible improvements to this study: extend the exposure have separate gender groups interview parents and include them more