Understanding Nutritional Science – A Video Contest

A video contest to help the public better understand nutrition research

The Understanding Nutritional Science competition promotes the creation of short videos by ASN members that showcase nutrition research topics and their impact on public health. The video competition helps educate the public about nutrition research and teaches consumers the impact of nutrition research on public health, encouraging them to investigate nutrition information they come across in a scientific manner.

The second annual video competition was recently held and the winners were announced at Nutrition 2019 held in Baltimore, Maryland. The winning videos were shown in ASN Live! on Sunday, June 9.

Introducing the 2019 winners…

First Place: TX Sprouts: Cultivating Healthier Lives

Submitted by Matthew Landry, Sarvenaz Vandyousefi, Reem Ghaddar, Fiona Asigbee, and Jaimie Davis, all of University of Texas at Austin.

School gardens have become a common school-based health promotion strategy to enhance dietary behaviors in the US; however, their potential impact on obesity and metabolic health is not fully understood. TX Sprouts is the first cluster randomized-controlled trial (RCT) to assess the effects of a gardening, nutrition, and cooking program on dietary intake, obesity, and related metabolic disorders in elementary aged children. The program is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

16 elementary schools across the Austin area are assigned by chance to either the 1-year garden intervention or delayed intervention control group. We measure the effects of the program on childhood obesity markers, dietary intake, dietary related behaviors, physical activity levels and academic performance. Each school receives a garden designed and built at their schools (~$5K each, paid for by the grant), 18 weekly garden/nutrition/cooking classes taught during school hours (which will be taught by a garden/nutrition educator, provided by the grant), monthly garden/cooking/nutrition parent classes, assistance forming and resources to support a Garden Club at each school (consisting of interested teachers, parents, children, and staff) in the first year to help support sustainability.

Second Place: The Science of a Calorimeter

Submitted by Deb Dutcher, Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.

This video was made in partnership with the British Medical Journal to accompany the publication demonstrating how the researchers measured food referenced in the publication.

Third Place: Germ Free Mice in Research

Submitted by Lauren Brink of University of Arkansas, V. Laxmi Yeruva of Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, and Katelin Matazel of Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

The relationship between health and the microbiome is a hot topic in the mainstream media. Many of the latest magazines both scientific and pop-culture feature articles about how modulating the microbes of the gut can alter health. In our video, we describe the research taking place at Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center and Arkansas Children’s Research Center, part of the Center for Translational Pediatric Research. We are working to understand how the colonization of microbial communities and/or breastmilk components in infancy through breastfeeding or formula feeding shapes babies’ immune system. We hope that our work will further our understanding of neonatal health because we believe that every baby deserves the best start in life!

Thanks to everyone who created and submitted videos for this contest, and for the winners for joining us at Nutrition 2019 and talking with the audience about your research. We look forward to holding this contest again next year, so check back here in late 2019 for submission details!