Today, I was reading this message on The Vegetable Grower of May 2007. I couldn’t agree more with the statement that garden produce creates a positive food environment.
Meanwhile, I was thinking at the poor children living in the developing countries, in particular at those living in the desertified drylands.
If we want to create this “positive food environment“, we should first of all offer more opportunities to construct family gardens and school gardens. It still sounds unbelievable that authorities and donors are so difficult to be convinced to invest in such small and cheap, but very efficient gardens.
Why not encourage the children at school to grow their own vegetables and young fruit trees in containers (read plastic or PET bottles and plastic shopping bags/grow bags) ? It’s extremely cheap and it’s good for the environment (no littering of bottles an bags anymore !
Anyway, I hope the day will come that children will grow their own vegetables and fruits with a minimum of water at school and at home, in the small family garden. That’s one of the best practices to combat desertification and to alleviate poverty. Is this so difficult to understand ?
Read at :
The Vegetable Grower
http://www.vegetable-garden-guide.com/The_Vegetable_Grower-the-vegetable-grower-may07.html
Kids + Veg Can Add Up - With a Little Help
Plant a garden to grow your kids’ desire for vegetables and fruit, a new study suggests If you are looking for a way to encourage your children to eat their fruits and vegetables, search no further than your backyard, suggests new Saint Louis University research. Pre-school children in rural areas eat more fruits and vegetables when the produce is homegrown.
“It was a simple, clear finding,” said Debra Haire-Joshu, Ph.D., director of Saint Louis University’s Obesity Prevention Center and a study author. “Whether a food is homegrown makes a difference. Garden produce creates what we call a ‘positive food environment.’”
Researchers interviewed about 1,600 parents of pre-school-aged children who live in rural southeast Missouri. They found that pre-school children who were almost always served homegrown fruits and vegetables were more than twice as likely to eat five servings a day than those who rarely or never ate homegrown produce.
The American Dietetic Association recommends between 5 and 13 servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
In addition, children who grow up eating fresh-from-the-garden produce also prefer the taste of fruits and vegetables to other foods, the parents told researchers.
The study, in the April issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, found the garden-fed children were more likely to see their parents eating fruits and vegetables.
A greater variety of fruits and vegetables – more tomatoes, melons, broccoli, beans and carrots – also were available in the homes of families who nearly always had homegrown produce.
The implications of the research are important because they point to a simple way of getting kids to eat healthier, Haire-Joshu said. Plant a garden or encourage your school to do so.
“When children are involved with growing and cooking food, it improves their diet,” Haire-Joshu said. “Students at schools with gardens learn about maths and science and they also eat more fruits and vegetables. Kids eat healthier and they know more about eating healthy.
It’s a winning and low-cost strategy to improve the nutrition of our children at a time when the pediatric obesity is an epidemic problem.”
Source: Saint Louis University
