{"id":131516,"date":"2017-11-09T09:46:13","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T14:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=131516"},"modified":"2017-11-09T09:46:13","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T14:46:13","slug":"sprouting-healthy-food-habits-early-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2017\/11\/sprouting-healthy-food-habits-early-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Sprouting Healthy Food Habits Early in Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little dirt, some seeds and water are growing another way to reduce Hartford\u2019s childhood obesity rates.<\/p>\n

\"Hartford
Hartford preschoolers participating in the Little City Sprouts gardening and nutrition education program (Photo: Little City Sprouts).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cLittle City Sprouts\u201d 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<\/a> and UConn Health\u2019s Husky Nutrition Programs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The program was launched in response to UConn Health\u2019s 2012 report showing that 37 percent of Hartford preschool children were overweight or obese.\u00a0However, early-childhood intervention programs like Little City Sprouts have helped lower Hartford\u2019s child obesity rate to 32 percent as noted in UConn Health\u2019s recently released 2017 follow-up study<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile 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,\u201d says study author Ann M. Ferris, Ph.D.<\/a>, Professor Emerita<\/em> of medicine and public health at UConn Health. \u00a0\u201cThe gardening program sends an early message to young children that it matters what you eat and it may remain with them lifelong.\u201d<\/p>\n

All year-round Little City Sprouts Program Coordinator, Matilda Story,\u00a0teaches 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.\u00a0 Children learn during educational activities in the classroom and the garden.\u00a0The goal of the program is to encourage Hartford\u2019s youngest residents to get excited about adopting healthy lifestyles and eating habits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese young kids get their hands right into the dirt of the gardens to learn,\u201d says Ferris. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Ferris, programs like Little City Sprouts are critical because it is in the early years of a child\u2019s life when lifelong food habits are established.<\/p>\n

Ferris stresses: \u201cIf you don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"(Photo
(Photo by Little City Sprouts)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Little City Sprouts reaches about 350 children annually by conducting bi-weekly education in up to four centers a week.\u00a0Since its launch in April 2015, Little City Sprouts has worked with over 12 early care and education centers in Hartford.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany young kids, especially those growing up in a city environment, don\u2019t always understand where food actually comes from,\u201d says Ferris. \u201cA 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\u2019s closer bond to healthy foods and potentially a lifelong cherishing of their nutritional value to their body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little City Sprouts is part of UConn Health Husky Nutrition Programs\u2019 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<\/a>, for early literacy and nutrition education and Husky Nutrition<\/a>, an initiative directed at parents to help reduce preschoolers consumption of sugar sweetened beverages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little City Sprouts is a year-round gardening and nutrition education program for 2-to 5-year-old preschoolers in Hartford child care centers. The initiative is one of the programs that is helping reduce childhood obesity rates in Hartford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":131517,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-131516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-27 09:53:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/131517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131516"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=131516"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=131516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}