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3 Lessons You Can Learn from the White House Vegetable Garden

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Screen Shot 2014-06-12 at 3.46.05 PMFirst Lady Michelle Obama recently invited some school children to help her harvest the first vegetables from the White House garden. Their reward? The kids made salads in the State Dining Room and dined on the results.Oh yes, they also had their pictures taken with the First Lady, who used the photo op to pledge to “fight until the bitter end” to keep school lunch standards in place.

No matter how the latest skirmish over school lunches ends, here are three lessons you can learn from the White House vegetable garden.

  1. Gardening helps motivate kids to reach for more vegetables

In a recent study, 115 second graders were assigned to one of three groups. In one, children received nutrition education in the classroom. In another, they got the same nutrition education, but also participated in a school garden. The third group served as a control, receiving neither nutrition education or the opportunity to garden.

Both groups of second graders who received nutrition education, significantly improved their nutrition knowledge and taste preferences for fresh produce. The gardening group, however, also was much more likely to choose—and eat– vegetables during school lunch.

2. Gardening can help fight childhood obesity

For seven weeks, the Growing Healthy Kids program provided weekly gardening, nutrition and cooking lessons as well as social events for kids, aged 2 to 15 years, and their parents.

During the program, availability of fruit and vegetables increased 146 percent for children of participants. Vegetable consumption rose 33 percent. Fruit consumption increased by 28 percent.

By the end of the program, 17 percent of obese or overweight children had improved their body mass index 100 percent of the children at a healthy weight had maintained that classification.

3. The more teens are exposed to vegetables, the more they like them.

In the Sprouting Healthy Kids intervention study, 246 teens were assigned to several different groups, ranging from in-class lessons and after school gardening to visits to farms, taste testing, farmers’ visits to school and a farm-to-school program.

Students who were exposed to two or more groups scored significantly higher on fruit and vegetable intake, knowledge of produce and were less likely to prefer unhealthy foods.

Or to paraphrase the lyrics of the folk singer, Pete Seeger’s Garden Song:

“Inch by inch, row by row, if you want your kids to eat more vegetables, teach them how their gardens can grow.”

Got a nutrition question? E-mail me at sally@sallysquires.com and I’ll do my best to answer it. Sign up for my soon to be launched e-mail newsletter at: www.leanplateclub.com


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