{"id":192956,"date":"2026-03-16T01:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T01:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/192956\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T01:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T01:44:08","slug":"tampa-students-get-hands-on-lesson-in-healthy-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/192956\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa students get hands-on lesson in healthy eating"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0March is National Nutrition Month, and with childhood obesity on the rise across the U.S.<\/a>, teaching kids about nutrition early in life is more important than ever.<\/p>\n

Last week, students from Graham Elementary School in Tampa took a unique field trip to the TampaWell Community Garden to learn how to be fueled for success.<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

Tampa students visited a community garden to learn about nutrition and gardening
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The TampaWell Community Garden is located in a food desert and provides fresh produce
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Activities included nutrition lessons, scavenger hunts, and seed planting<\/p>\n

Finding healthy foods isn\u2019t always easy, and for some communities, it\u2019s even harder, but students tackled healthy eating head-on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re taking them through a nutrition lesson, and then we\u2019re also putting them out doing scavenger hunts and planting little seeds so they can grow their own vegetables and fruits and we really wanted to emphasis the importance of eating whole food,\u201d said Karen Buckenheimer.<\/p>\n

Buckenheimer is the Executive Director of More Health, a nonprofit that teaches health and safety lessons to children and their families. They hosted students along with TGH, their founding partner, at the TampaWell Community Garden, a true oasis in a designated food desert.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy educating them how they can have their own garden in their backyard, or come here to the TampaWell location it really does empower them to be able to have fresh fruit and vegetables, and learn how to start their family off right and establish those habits at a very young age,\u201d said Buckenheimer.<\/p>\n

Which is key\u2014according to the CDC, one in five school-aged children have obesity, putting them at higher risk for other chronic health conditions and diseases. Pediatricians say events like this can have a big impact on these kids\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of kids, unfortunately, don\u2019t have that exposure.\u00a0We all have really busy lives these days, and I know parents are busy working to put food on that table but they might not have that extra minute or two to explain why they\u2019re making the choices they are for their children\u2019s nutrition,\u201d said Stephanie Saldarriaga, MD.<\/p>\n

And she hopes the lessons these students learned will help plant the seeds for a lifetime of healthy choices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition to hosting students, the TampaWell Community Garden is also a resource for the community. TGH says it serves one of the most food-insecure neighborhoods in the city, providing nutritious fruits and vegetables to high-risk patients and people in the community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0March is National Nutrition Month, and with childhood obesity on the rise across the U.S., teaching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4996,3948,9995,6466,113,5711,571,6075,276,115,135,137,136,835],"class_list":["post-192956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-education","tag-app-health","tag-app-latest-education-stories","tag-app-latest-health-stories","tag-education","tag-fallon-silcox","tag-health","tag-health-and-medicine","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}