Our Current Activities

Community-based diet and lifestyle intervention
The Foods for Health Institute is part of a research team recently awarded $4.5 million in funds from USDA’s Agriculture Food and Research Initiative (AFRI). The project, Niños Sanos, Familias Sanas (Healthy Children, Healthy Family), is led by Professor Adela de la Torre, Ph.D. This diet and lifestyle intervention targets Mexican-American children and their families living in California’s central valley where obesity is highly prevalent. FFHI researchers are working specifically to improve physical education in these communities, while enabling children themselves to measure and learn about their own activity achievements! Read more about the FFHI's involvement in the Healthy Children, Healthy Family project. 

Health and wellness monitoring
We test the safety, efficacy and feasibility of different non-invasive health assessment devices, determining those most acceptable for use in school age-children. The range of technologies being tested include dual-energy x-ray absorptiometery (DXA) for body composition (bone density, body fat, etc.), accelerometers for physical activity, heart rate monitors, dietary assessment tools, among others. Not only must devices be accurate, but the information must be provided in means suitable to children and in ways that reinforce the implications of the measures to their lifestyle choices and their health outcomes. We benefit from partnerships with companies like Polar™, whose physical education program and monitoring equipment do just this. 

Curriculum development to personalize health learning
We are working with educators to create and test personalized health learning modules and activities aligned with California education standards for Science, Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) and health education. Using a “personalized health” approach, students engage in classroom-based inquiry around their own health indicators and determinants, each becoming the “clinician,” “investigator” and “promoter” of their own personal health. Curricula and teaching tools will be disseminated through the UC Cooperative Extension network, in place to move educational innovations from the concept to classroom implementation.

Community outreach
Foods for Health scientists participate in outreach activities, teaching children their measurable health indicators and determinants. Most recently, our scientists led an activity with the School of Education using hands-on demonstrations that allowed children to learn about their own genetic determinants of taste and why these may influence their personal food preferences. Activities included tasting foods with varying amounts of bitter compounds (vegetables, cacao, etc), counting taste buds as a measure of taste sensitivity, and taste-testing a bitter substance to determine if they have the bitter taste receptor, the presence of which can greatly impact food preferences.

Prototyping an integrative Health Report Card
A multidisciplinary team of academics and educators at FFHI are creating the framework for a web-based Health Report Card that combines different health assessment data in an interpretable format for children. This tangible summary report combines students’ concrete metrics of personal health with ongoing monitoring, while educating them into the concepts of quantifiable health statistics.

Digital learning tools
With partner Armchair Revolutionary™ and the UC Davis School of Education, we are developing multi-gaming platforms that use data feeds from health assessment technologies to provide children engaging environments to view personalized health feedback and lifestyle guidance.