Garden-fresh Produce and Exercise Reduce Colon Cancer Risk by Reducing Central Obesity and Increasing Stool Quality

The investigators propose a church-based health promotion program designed to reduce colon cancer risk in a mostly African American community served by the Lincoln Memorial Church in South Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County of Public Health has divided the county into nine service planning areas (SPAs), of which South LA is one. Of all the SPAs, the South LA SPA has the highest prevalence of obesity and the lowest adherence to federal nutrition recommendations. With seed grant funds from a cooperative NIH grant shared by the Drew School of Medicine and University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), the Lincoln Memorial Church of Los Angeles is sponsoring a behavioral intervention featuring 10 weekly sessions composed of cooking demonstrations, brief didactic nutrition education and 10-minute exercise bouts. All sessions will take place in the church kitchen and meeting room. Participants are expected to be 20 mostly African American, overweight/obese community members. The behavioral goal of the health promotion sessions is to encourage participants to eat more fiber-rich plant foods, minimally processed, to consume fewer pro-inflammatory foods including foods rich in saturated fat, sodium and refined sugar, and to engage in federally recommended amounts of physical activity. If research resources become available to enable blood chemistry results and/or fecal metagenomic results, the investigators would predict that 3 months after participant enrollment in the study, participants would experience a reduction in their high-sensitivity-C-reactive protein concentration and an increase in the relative abundance of obligate anaerobic bacteria relative to other bacteria in fecal samples. As seems likely, however, results will be limited to evaluating the weight and form of participant stool samples using the Bristol Stool Chart and evaluating participants' waist circumference and systolic blood pressure. The 3 month follow-up assessment is expected to show increased stool weight, improved Bristol Stool Chart score, decreased waist circumference, decreased systolic blood pressure, reduced intake of saturated fat and refined sugar, and increased weekly physical activity.