Schoolkids Learn Gardening and Cooking for Better Health

Children in Los Angeles participated in a 12-week gardening, nutrition and cooking program which aimed to reduce obesity and related metabolic disorders. Jaimie Davis AUSTIN, Texas - Sixteen Austin-area elementary schools will participate in a study with University of Texas at Austin researchers thanks to a $3.85 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to learn whether growing fruits and vegetables and learning nutrition and cooking skills can improve health and reduce childhood obesity. The project - a first-of-its-kind controlled experiment in four area school districts - is breaking ground on its first school gardens in Central Texas this spring. Jaimie Davis, an associate professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, is calling the program TX Sprouts. The intervention will introduce school gardens and nutrition and cooking classes for third-, fourthand fifth-grade students in schools where children are at higher than average risk for being overweight and obese. The first garden of herb beds, vegetable beds, several native beds and an outdoor teaching area will be built at Oak Meadows Elementary in Manor on March 5. Davis and her team hope to expand on promising effects seen in an earlier pilot study Davis led at four schools in Los Angeles.