Move those taste buds

There was starfruit.

There was blood orange.

There was dragon fruit.

And they weren’t characters in some video game.

They were exotic fruits, which Pomona Elementary School tasted last week for the first time — the result of a collaborative effort to cut down on obesity in the classroom.

The 400 children at the Costa Mesa campus also hit the gym and recess with Principal Stacy Holmes, performing dance routines and playing old-fashioned kick ball in a program designed to get the children doing something they should be doing naturally at their age: moving.

It’s all part of KID HEALTHY, Steps to Healthy Living Campaign.

Based in Santa Ana, the program, patterned after Michelle Obama’s, Let’s Move! campaign, made its presence felt at Pomona.

“This an amazing event,” Holmes said. “The kids enjoyed the hip-hop dance for the first time and got to taste fruits they’ve never tasted before.”

And that’s the point — to introduce kids to different fruits and vegetables at a time when chips, soda and high volumes of corn syrup and sucrose reign supreme in some of the poorer households in Orange County, said Dolores Barrett, a spokeswoman for Community Action Partnership, a Garden Grove-based nonprofit that owns the Orange County Second Harvest Food Bank.

Soon, the food bank through Community Action Partnership — and with the help of United Way — will start sending the kids at Pomona bags of different fruits and vegetables to take home to their parents.

It’s part of a pilot program, Farm to School, that’s going to kick off in earnest next fall, Barrett said.

“So often we tell kids how they should eat and what they should be eating,” Barrett said. “But in the end, there’s only so much you can teach. Once they feel the fruits and vegetables in their hands, and they taste them, well, only then will they truly learn.”

In California, the obesity epidemic is nothing to ignore, said Jackie Teichmann, regional director for the KID HEALTHY program in Santa Ana.

According to Teichmann, the overall obesity rate among children and adults stands at 34% statewide.