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Anti-Obesity Initiative Teaches Under-5 Set How to Love Fruits and Vegetables

The 22 children in a Head Start class in East Harlem shopped for plastic carrots and tomatoes at their own version of a New York City green cart, counted backward from five with a picture of blueberries, and jumped up and down to a song about bananas.

But when it came time to twist and shape clay into their favorite fruits and veggies, Lauren Williams, 4, had another idea. She wanted to make an alligator instead.

“Maybe we can make some fruits and vegetables that an alligator can eat,” suggested Laura Shortt, an educator who is working with the class on healthy food choices.

A new obesity prevention initiative by the Children’s Museum of Manhattan in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health seeks to teach children who cannot yet spell the names of their fruits and vegetables to love them and eat them every day.

While similar efforts have been aimed at older school-age children, this program is devised specifically to reach the under-5 set through interactive displays, classes infused with art and music, and workshops for their parents.

“There’s a significant amount of research that points to lifelong habits being formed by the time you are 3 or 4,” said Andrew Ackerman, executive director of the Children’s Museum, who draws a comparison between healthy eating and literacy efforts. “If you get this right when kids are below 4, then you’re not spending enormous sums on remediation.”

This month, museum and health officials are promoting a food-based curriculum called 
“Eat Play Grow,” which comes with ready-made lessons on things like portion control, healthy drinks, exercising and sleeping.

The curriculum, in English and Spanish, is now available free on websites and blogs, and will be distributed to teachers in low-income areas nationally. In January, the museum will supplement it with a new website and additional training for teachers and caregivers.

“Eat Play Grow,” which was supported with $300,000 in public and private grants and donations, has been tested since 2009 in 50 early childhood programs at housing projects, community centers and libraries in New York City and New Orleans, both cities that have sought to combat obesity. The Children’s Museum, which installed an interactive exhibition at its Upper West Side location in 2012, has also served as a research base and training center.

Mr. Ackerman said that children’s museums in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Youngstown, Ohio, planned to offer the same sort of exhibition, and that many other museums and libraries had expressed interest in offering the children’s classes and parent workshops in their communities.

In East Harlem, the initiative has transformed a child-care center at the James Weldon Johnson Houses, a public-housing project, into a hub of anti-obesity activities.

Since February, the museum has sent its educators once a week to teach a class, and recently completed a $295,000 installation there that replicates some of the museum displays, including a green cart loaded with plastic fruits and vegetables for playtime and 
a talking green dragon named Alphie, which devours alphabet tiles while saying things like 
“B is for Banana.”

David Nocenti, the executive director of Union Settlement Association, which runs the 
Head Start classes at the Johnson Houses and six other sites, said that his staff members had started incorporating lessons from “Eat Play Grow” into their daily routines.

“There’s a huge difference between simply serving healthy food to children, and actually educating children, parents and staff members about the food that is being served,” said 
Mr. Nocenti, who hopes to expand the curriculum to all the locations.

The other morning, Ms. Shortt and two museum educators reminded the children in the Head Start class to eat their “Go foods”: foods and drinks that can be consumed anytime (fruits, vegetables, low-fat milk). There are also “Whoa foods” — French fries, doughnuts and candy — to be eaten sparingly.

Healthy choices were reinforced at story time when they read the preschool classic “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and during a rendition of “Old MacDonald” in which they sang: “Vegetables are good for me, E-I-E-I-O.”

The lessons seem to have stuck. Lauren, the girl who wanted an alligator, settled for making an apple out of clay, then coloring it green. Half of it was for the gator, she said, and half for her.

As the children gathered around tables at snack time to assemble their own parfaits from strawberries, blueberries and low-fat yogurt, Avery Cruz, 4, asked for another helping. 
“I want a lot,” he said. “Strawberries are my favorite.”

Ms. Shortt said that she tried to broaden the children’s palates by introducing fruits and vegetables outside their comfort zones. Not long ago, she brought in a red pepper. Lauren tried it and liked it, but her older sister spit it out. That was still more successful, though, than the time Ms. Shortt tried raw green beans at a program in the Bronx with no takers (educators say it usually takes multiple tries for children to like new foods).

To instill healthy eating habits at home, museum educators have held parent workshops to dispel misperceptions about food — say, that sugar-laden orange juice is good for you — over plates of veggies and hummus. Some low-income families, they found, were serving whole milk because they believed that was what wealthy families drank and therefore must be the best.

The children are now teaching grown-ups. Last year, a director of a Head Start program in Brooklyn where the anti-obesity curriculum was tested walked into the classroom with a soda. The children gave her such a hard time that she not only gave up the drink, but also arranged for the soda machine to be removed.

“You don’t want to take on a bunch of 4-year-olds,” Mr. Ackerman said.

Photos: Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times
Sudais Masoud had a snack at a nutrition class at the James Weldon Johnson Houses in Manhattan.
A book on healthy eating was given to children at the Johnson Houses, which has become a hub of anti-obesity activities.

A version of this article appears in print on November 14, 2013, on page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Crayons Down. Now Dig Into That Healthful Parfait.

By WINNIE HU