A Gardening Program to Assess Unhealthy Lifestyle Contributions to Summer Weight Gain in Children

University of Wisconsin (UW)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Overweight

Treatments: Other: Garden Fit

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00974727

MSN106189

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of a summer gardening program on summer weight gain in overweight middle school children.

Full description

In the past two decades, the combination of unhealthy eating and physical inactivity has contributed to doubling the percentage of children and adolescents who are overweight. Childhood overweight is known to lead to increased risk for several morbidities in childhood and into adulthood including type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Recent data shows that children experience greater and more variable increases in BMI during summer vacation than during the school year. Our project aims to determine whether summer weight gain is due to a decrease in physical activity or an increase in daily calories as well as to assess the effectiveness of a summer gardening program on preventing summer body fat gain. We will randomize 40 middle-school children who are above the 95th percentile for BMI into either a control or intervention group. The control group will receive the standard of care and the intervention group will participate in Garden Fit, a summer gardening project at Troy Gardens in Madison, WI. As part of Garden Fit, subjects will participate in weeding, landscaping and trail maintenance activities as well as preparing meals twice a week with fresh foods from the gardens. We hypothesize that summer weight gain is due to a worsening of healthy lifestyle (decreased physical activity from school to summer and increased eating of high calorie snacks). Additionally, we hypothesize that an intervention that increases physical activity and provides increased access to healthy foods will reduce the trend of summer BMI increase.

Enrollment: 12 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 10 to 14 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Middle school child aged 10-14 years
• BMI at or above the 85th percentile for height and weight
• Able to attend 8-week summer program and clinic visits

Exclusion criteria

• Any known metabolic disorder
• Any physical disability that prevents or limits physical activity
• Claustrophobia

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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12 participants in 2 patient groups

Gardening Program

Experimental group

Treatment:

Other: Garden Fit

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Subjects received the standard of care for the summer.