SHRIYA YENDLURI, 4, offers a yellow daisylike flower to a visitor at the garden in the North Bay Children's Center. When the flower is accepted, the little girl explains: "It's edible."
It's a typical day at the center's 8,000-square-foot Garden of Eatin' in Novato, a nine-year-old experiment in nutrition education and healthy families — not to mention kale, carrots, cabbage, radishes, beets, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (well, maybe not the last four).
The program has caught the eye of researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, who will be studying its methods for the next four months.
"(The children) are actively involved in planting, maintaining and harvesting the crops," said Claudia Chaufan, an assistant professor of health policy and social medicine at UCSF's Institute for Health and Aging. "The vegetables they grow are served at breaks and school meals. We want to find out if these learned habits practiced at school impact practices at home among children and their families."
The study will analyze and document what happens when children are educated on proper nutrition and play an active role in dietary decisions at home.
Back at the garden, "anybody want some kale?" asks teacher Audrey Mingin. In a response likely to catapult many a parent into a state of shock, the group of about 30 children choruses, "yes!" As Mingin tears a leaf from a gigantic green kale bush, children cluster around eagerly.
"Every Tuesday, children bring home fresh produce we get from the food bank," said Susan Gilmore, the center's executive director. "We print out recipes in Spanish and English. The children are training their parents in healthy eating."
The Garden of Eatin' isn't the only such fresh-produce program in Marin schools.
"The greater majority of our schools have them (gardens)," said Miguel Villarreal, food and nutrition director for Novato Unified School District. As with the Garden of Eatin', Villarreal said, the children plant and cultivate the vegetables. "Loma Verde and Olive elementary schools are two of the most active," he said. Also, schools in the Sausalito Marin City School District have gardens as well as classroom cooking programs, and schools throughout Marin have been encouraging gardens and gardening among students.
In the case of the Garden of Eatin', the program started in 2004 at the children's center, which provides full-day child care for infants, toddlers and preschool children and before- and after-school care for school-age kids. The center was founded in 1986 and has six campuses, the main one being in Novato at the former Hamilton Air Force base.
"In 2004, I read a report about the childhood obesity epidemic. It said today's children are on track to have shorter life spans than their parents because of preventable diseases caused by poor eating habits and inactivity," Gilmore said.
"I realized at the time that we were part of the problem. We provide breakfast, lunch and snacks for the children that are funded by the state, and we were using canned goods," she said. "So we set out to overhaul our meal program and created an age-appropriate nutrition program integrated into our curriculum at all six sites."
Now the center, which serves a total of 340 children at its six facilities, uses fruits and vegetables from the garden, the Marin Food Bank and other sources.
These practices drew the attention of UCSF's Chaufan and her fellow researchers. The assistant professor was studying Type 2 diabetes and the obesity epidemic when she learned about the garden, and decided to augment her study with the results being achieved at the campus.
Chaufan and her fellow researchers will interview parents as well as many of the center's 72 workers and observe in the classrooms. They will take baseline measurements, recording the diets of new students at the center and monitoring their shopping habits over time.
"They're looking into whether their food choices change, things like how many times a week you have broccoli, how many times a week do you sit down as a family for dinner," Gilmore said.
Outside at the garden, nutrition educator Patty Sherwood looks on as Sinead Ferrell-Bell, 5, and Liam Bonifas, 5, both of Novato, plant peas.
Though they're having fun planting, as far as consumption is concerned, carrots are big with this crew.
Not only Sinead and Liam name the skinny orange root vegetables their favorites, but Ryan Markrack, 5, of Novato — clearly a leader in the group with his backward blue and green cap and red baseball jersey — says, "I love to pick carrots."
According to Gilmore, youngsters like Sinead, Liam and Ryan are educating their folks in nutrition.
"They are the ones in the shopping cart," Gilmore said. "One grandparent told us her youngster kept saying, 'bracca, bracca.' She thought he was saying, 'grandma, grandma,' but he really wanted broccoli. He was used to fresh broccoli in the garden, and when she bought frozen broccoli with cheese sauce, he wanted nothing to do with it."
Gilmore hopes the UCSF study will verify this kind of anecdotal evidence. "By partnering with UCSF, we will be able to develop metrics and measurements to quantify our results," she said.
Meanwhile, the 4-year-old Shriya continues to hand out the yellow flowers, which, it turns out, are calendula, according to program manager Lori Kemmer, and are, indeed, edible — another lesson from one of the children of the Garden of Eatin'.