Farm-to-Preschool in East Tennessee: Evaluation of a Small-scale Farmer’s Market at a Childcare Center on Household Fruit and Vegetable Availability and Preschoolers’ Consumption of Fruits and Vegetables

Background: Most preschool-aged children do not consume an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables (F&V). Accessibility to F&V and parental influence are important factors in determining fruit and vegetable consumption in preschool-aged children. The incorporation of farmer’s markets at childcare centers as part of a farm-to-preschool program provides an opportunity to increase access to F&V and engage parents in supporting positive changes in their children’s dietary behaviors. Gaps in the farm-to-preschool literature include a lack of well-designed intervention trials that include a control group and rigorous evaluation tools.

Methods: This was a pilot study with a quasi-experimental, pre-test, post-test design with an intervention and control group. Children and parents participated in a 12-week nutrition program at both the intervention and control childcare centers. Additional farm-to-preschool activities were provided at the intervention site including a small-scale farmer’s market for two hours once per week for eight weeks at the childcare center. Parents were asked to complete a home food inventory (HFI) to assess F&V availability and a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) to evaluate their preschooler’s usual consumption of F&V. Paired-samples t-tests were used to analyze data.

Results: Results indicated that there were no significant differences between pre and post scores for fruit availability (7.57 to 7.0 P = 0.34), vegetable availability (11.79 to 11.07 P = 0.30), preschoolers’ consumption of fruit (4.21 to 3.78 P = 0.36), and consumption of vegetables (4.86 to 5.5 P = 0.18), despite parents at the intervention facility spending an average of $6.04 per week on fresh produce at the preschool farmer’s market. Similarly no significant results were found for the control group.

Discussion: The number of F&V in the home did not significantly change at post evaluation for either group, potentially indicating that the parents in the intervention group were purchasing their usual F&V at the small-scale farmer’s market, and displacing what they usually purchased elsewhere. Future farm-to-preschool research may benefit from a mixed methods approach that captures how having local produce available at a childcare center could influence families in a variety of positive ways.