Harvest for Healthy Kids Pilot Study: Associations between Exposure to a Farm-to-Preschool Intervention and Willingness to Try and Liking of Target Fruits and Vegetables among Low-Income Children in Head Start.
BACKGROUND
Most US children do not meet recommendations for daily fruit and vegetable intake.


OBJECTIVE
Our aim was to evaluate the hypothesis that at post-intervention, children exposed to the Harvest for Healthy Kids pilot study will have greater willingness to try and liking of target foods vs children in the comparison group, controlling for baseline differences.


METHODS
We conducted a quasi-experimental pilot study with comparison, low-intervention, and high-intervention groups. Pre- and post-intervention survey data were collected.


METHODS
The intervention period was October 2012 to May 2013. The analysis sample was 226 children within the higher-level unit sample of five participating Head Start centers (Portland, OR); 231 children dropped out of or enrolled in Head Start mid-year, were absent during or refused to participate in the assessments, or were missing covariates.


METHODS
The comparison group received no intervention components; the low-intervention group received foodservice modifications; the high-intervention group received foodservice modifications and nutrition education.


METHODS
Willingness to try and liking of target foods were tested and analyzed as binary variables.


METHODS
McNemar's tests were used to assess differences between pre- and post-intervention scores by intervention group. Fixed slope, random intercept multilevel logistic models were used to assess associations between intervention group and post-intervention scores controlling for covariates, adjusting for baseline values, and accounting for center level clustering.


RESULTS
The difference between pre- and post-intervention willingness to try and liking of target foods was statistically significant for a variety of foods; for example, 44.2% of children liked rutabaga pre-intervention compared with 78.1% post-intervention (P=0.004). Multilevel modeling indicated similar associations.


CONCLUSIONS
The Harvest for Healthy Kids pilot study suggests a positive association between the intervention and willingness to try and liking for target foods among study participants. Additional research is needed to assess the impact of the program on fruit and vegetable intake.
Betty T
BT
Izumi
Cara L
CL
Eckhardt
Jennifer A
JA
Hallman
Katherine
K
Herro
Dawn A
DA
Barberis
D002664:Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D002675:Child, Preschool; D055812:Community-Based Participatory Research; D004032:Diet; D018479:Early Intervention, Educational; D005260:Female; D005502:Food; D005518:Food Preferences; D005638:Fruit; D015438:Health Behavior; D006266:Health Education; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D052756:Nutritional Sciences / Q000193:education; D009922:Oregon; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011203:Poverty; D014675:Vegetables
Farm to preschool; Fruits and vegetables; Head Start; Nutrition intervention; Pilot study