This isn't just a school garden: Measuring the impact of a food-production focused urban gardening program on adolescent food habits and physical activity

The past few years have seen a marked increase in the number, support and perceived benefits of school gardens. Nutritional education programs often incorporate gardening for the perceived benefit of increasing knowledge and preferences for fruits and vegetables. However, school garden programs are often treated as add-ons to nutritional programs and are not fully utilized to drive behavioral change. While a national dialogue is growing regarding the childhood obesity epidemic and its consequences, a small but growing contingent of school garden programs are changing their focus to address the social justice/food justice needs of their communities. These programs view increasing access to healthy fruits and vegetables and increasing the sheer presence of locally grown produce in a community as an avenue to increased health. Nutritional education, diet shifting and change in knowledge, attitudes and beliefs are seen as part and parcel in the process of producing food for the community. This session presents a program evaluation of one of these emerging programs, the Urban Agriculture Institutes of Urban Tilth in Richmond, Calif. A pre/post, intervention/control study looked at students in 9th through 12th grades at two high schools in Richmond, Calif., that hold urban agriculture institutes. Measurements included: fruit and vegetable consumption, knowledge, attitudes and behavior linked to food and community, self-efficacy to change eating habits and physical activity.