A little dirt, some seeds and water are growing another way to reduce Hartford’s childhood obesity rates.

“Little City Sprouts” is a year-round gardening and nutrition education program for 2-to 5-year-old preschoolers in Hartford child care centers led by Hartford Food System and UConn Health’s Husky Nutrition Programs.

The program was launched in response to UConn Health’s 2012 report showing that 37 percent of Hartford preschool children were overweight or obese. However, early-childhood intervention programs like Little City Sprouts have helped lower Hartford’s child obesity rate to 32 percent as noted in UConn Health’s recently released 2017 follow-up study.

“While there is still more progress to be made, programs like Little City Sprouts are still hard at work playing a role in helping reduce childhood obesity by exposing and educating young children to healthy foods and gardening,” says study author Ann M. Ferris, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of medicine and public health at UConn Health.  “The gardening program sends an early message to young children that it matters what you eat and it may remain with them lifelong.”

All year-round Little City Sprouts Program Coordinator, Matilda Story, teaches preschool-aged children in Hartford about healthy foods and how they grow. Children have hands-on experiences tasting fresh, healthy food through gardening, nutrition, and cooking lessons designed for them.  Children learn during educational activities in the classroom and the garden. The goal of the program is to encourage Hartford’s youngest residents to get excited about adopting healthy lifestyles and eating habits.

“These young kids get their hands right into the dirt of the gardens to learn,” says Ferris. “This hands-on gardening experience increases their retention about the importance of healthy foods for good nutrition exponentially. If they grow tomatoes, they will most likely harness memories of the experience always and the nutritional value of healthy foods.”

According to Ferris, programs like Little City Sprouts are critical because it is in the early years of a child’s life when lifelong food habits are established.

Ferris stresses: “If you don’t introduce healthy fruits and vegetables to children at a very early age, and repeat exposure, there is a good chance these healthy foods will not be part of their daily lives as adults.”

Little City Sprouts reaches about 350 children annually by conducting bi-weekly education in up to four centers a week. Since its launch in April 2015, Little City Sprouts has worked with over 12 early care and education centers in Hartford.  Little City Sprouts is funded by the Hartford Food System through grants and other donations, and a USDA grant to UConn Health Husky Nutrition Programs under the SNAP-Ed program.

“Many young kids, especially those growing up in a city environment, don’t always understand where food actually comes from,” says Ferris. “A gardening experience allows children to get to see first-hand how food is actually grown and taste very fresh fruits and vegetables. The experience may create a child’s closer bond to healthy foods and potentially a lifelong cherishing of their nutritional value to their body.”

Little City Sprouts is part of UConn Health Husky Nutrition Programs’ coordinated child and parent education and provider-engaged efforts to change food, nutrition and physical activity policies in early childcare settings to prevent childhood obesity. Additional preschool-aged programming includes Husky Reads, for early literacy and nutrition education and Husky Nutrition, an initiative directed at parents to help reduce preschoolers consumption of sugar sweetened beverages.