Science for a Healthier Nation

By Esther Robards-Forbes. Food styling by Hannah Casparian. Photos by Nolan Zunk

ON A RECENT AFTERNOON, Jaimie Davis, a professor of nutritional sciences at The University of Texas at Austin, was up to her elbows in pepper plants. As part of her research, Davis works with public schools in Central Texas to provide materials and training to set up school gardens. She and her EdEN Laboratory have published studies that found children who learn about gardening at school increase their vegetable intake, decrease their processed-food intake, improve their metabolic health and experience improved academic achievement and focus.

In a society where, for many people, what we eat is making us sick, Davis and her colleagues have found a tool to help turn the tide.

“A lot of the families in these schools [where we have gardens] live with food insecurity, often not knowing whether or how they will have their next meal. They live in food deserts, where families get their food from neighborhood convenience stores, and face a higher risk of childhood obesity and related health issues,” Davis said. “Teaching kids where their food comes from, how to grow it, how to prepare it – that’s key to changing eating behaviors over the long term.”

Davis is just one of many researchers helping to move the healthy-eating needle in a society that often makes unhealthy food and driving instead of more active transportation the default. Faced with real barriers to widespread healthy choices, UT Department of Nutritional Sciences researchers are rising to the challenge of reaching people where they are through better nutrition. 

Currently, nearly half of all American adults have one or more preventable diseases, many of which are related to poor diet and physical inactivity – conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, some cancers and poor bone health. A growing body of research lays the blame not with individuals alone but largely with systemic conditions, ranging from food insecurity to lack of access to grocery stores that sell fresh food products. Also problematic is having limited nutrition education and poor community planning that can make it difficult to navigate many areas in anything but a car. 

“Nutrition impacts every aspect of health, from physical to mental, including response to treatment,” said Molly Bray, chair of nutritional sciences. “A key component of disease prevention is starting early by teaching healthy nutrition concepts to children.  Incorporating dietary intake information into every treatment plan would improve patient outcomes.  Understanding how food intake impacts health, from the behavioral to the molecular level, is a major goal of our work.”

If ultra-processed and convenience foods are so much more affordable and accessible than the whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and lean proteins that experts have long known are healthiest, how can science best meet this moment?

“Nutrition impacts every aspect of health, from physical to mental, including response to treatment”

In Schools

The EdEN lab has answered this question by meshing school gardens with classroom curriculum. Outdoor education touches many academic subjects, fitting well with the topics educators already focus on in class. Davis and her team also teach simple cooking and nutrition concepts that children take home to share with their families. 

“We have been able to introduce children to a wide variety of vegetables that they’ve never had access to,” Davis said. “Parents I talk with ask, ‘How did you get my kid to eat kale?’ But when they grow the kale from seed and learn how to prepare it in olive oil and bake it into kale chips, they love it.”

Davis sees gardening as one way to tackle food insecurity and food deserts for some communities.

“If we can give them the exposure, the knowledge, the resources when they’re young, there is real potential to set them up for long-term success,” she said. “Behavior is difficult to change, but it can start here.”

In Doctors’ Offices

It’s recommended that medical students in the U.S. receive 25 hours of nutrition instruction, but only a small fraction of medical schools meet that modest goal. UT’s Department of Nutritional Sciences is working with the Dell Medical School on campus to change that. 

A culinary medicine course pairs medical students with nutritional sciences faculty to learn about key topics such as strategies for picky eaters, fad diets, and food insecurity. Sessions include hands-on cooking classes where medical students make recipes from scratch under the direction of the department’s resident culinary nutrition expert, Drew Hays. 

“My goal is to teach future physicians how to interpret the latest nutrition research, because there’s always something new coming out, and integrate that into actual food preparation,” Hays said. 

Currently, the course fulfills an elective credit for Dell medical students, but a master’s degree in culinary medicine is awaiting approval.

In the clinic, Marissa Burgermaster, an assistant professor, has developed an artificial intelligence system called Nutri that helps doctors talk with their patients about nutrition and set dietary goals, customized to the person.

Many nutrition interventions work for some people but not most, said Burgermaster, who studies behavioral nutrition. “There are many different interventions, and many people. It’s just a matter of matching them up. That’s where AI can help.”

The department also seeks to make sure that the registered dieticians coming out of its programs are ready to tackle the intersection of health and nutrition. 

“The sad truth is that most people don’t see a dietician until after they’ve had a heart attack, or been diagnosed with diabetes,” said Davis. “We need more dieticians in clinical settings to make sure people get the information they need to prevent these diseases.”

In Workplaces

Even something as simple as changing the offerings on the break room snack table can have an impact. That’s what Heather Leidy, an associate professor in the department, found in a 2022 study. 

People who were offered larger packages of popular snacks, rather than the same amount of snacks in several smaller packages, consumed about 12% more and opted for more carbohydrates and sugar. When people were given a greater variety of snack choices in small packages, they were more likely to opt for fruits and vegetables and didn’t increase unhealthy snacking. 

“Snacking has a tendency to promote excess food intake,” Leidy said. “This generally occurs since most snack foods are tasty and contain components we crave (like chocolate, cheese, salt, etc.), making it difficult to stop after a few bites.  This research illustrates which factors are key in helping us establish or maintain healthy eating patterns.” 

Working on their own, scientists may not be able to make our cities more walkable or change agricultural subsidies to focus on providing more fresh produce, but UT researchers are taking action through their science, nonetheless. They are showing how good nutrition, and the good health that comes with it, can find its way to people in the smaller spaces we all have a little more control over.

Check out resources from the EdEN Lab at UT that can help you get started on a garden or related program in your community.