School Gardening Activities Aimed at Obesity Prevention Improve Body Mass Index and Waist Circumference Parameters in School-Aged Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Consolidating evidence on the effectiveness of interventions promoting fruit and vegetable consumption: an umbrella review

“…Of the 19 reviews, four included only randomised controlled trials (RCTs) or cluster RCTs, [23,46,54,58] and seven undertook pooled quantitative analyses [23,26,44,46,47,54,55]. Eight reviews included primary studies undertaken in children and adolescents only (between 1 and 18 years), [22,23,46,51,54,55,57,58] two were in adults (> 18 years) only, [50,56] nine included all ages, [26, 43-45, 47, 49, 52, 53] and one review did not specify ages included but gave the population as workers [48].…”

“…In one of these reviews, which assessed the effects of cooking lessons, four of six primary studies were undertaken in the school setting (the other two occurred in the home) [22]. Five of the seven schoolbased intervention strategies were reported to be effective on at least one measure of fruit, vegetable, or combined fruit and vegetable intake, including providing free (or reduced price) fruits or vegetables, or increasing their within-school availability [55]; implementing food standard policies [55]; providing school gardens [57]; providing nutrition education and curricula [58]; and applying the Health Promoting Schools framework [54]. With the exception of nutrition education, effective intervention strategies were those targeting policy or modification of the school food environment.…”

Improving lifestyles sustainability through community gardening: results and lessons learnt from the JArDinS quasi-experimental study

“…Furthermore, it can also be argued that even the most active gardeners did not visit the garden enough to result in a lifestyle change. In the litterature, strong evidence of the health benefits of gardening mainly comes from gardening programs in school or medical settings where the activity is supervised and carried out regularly, usually on a weekly basis [3,52,53]. Additionally, in these institutionalized settings the gardening activity is often accompanied by other actions such as, in school, nutrition education courses, cooking classes, introduction of healthy foods in the school lunchrooms [3].…”

“…Additionally, in these institutionalized settings the gardening activity is often accompanied by other actions such as, in school, nutrition education courses, cooking classes, introduction of healthy foods in the school lunchrooms [3]. Hence, multicomponent programs are more likely to modify health outcomes [3]. More broadly, many questions regarding the health benefits of exposure to green spaces remain unanswered and further studies are needed to understand which forms of nature contact are the most beneficial, the duration of exposure needed, the variation of effects across populations and settings as well as the psychological pathways involved [54].…”

“…In recent years an increasing body of literature has suggested that gardening could address various public health concerns through its positive effects on nutrition, physical activity, social cohesion, quality of life, stress and depression [1]. Beyond evidence drawn from gardening programs within institutions such as schools or health care settings [2][3][4][5], less is known about the potential health effects of urban collective gardening on free-living adults. Collective gardens, defined as cultivated spaces managed collaboratively by groups of gardeners located at a distant place from gardeners' homes, generally take the form of community or allotment gardens [6].…”