Giving Compass' Take:
- Esther Robards summarizes a study that found that children ate more vegetables after participating in a school gardening program.
- What other benefits might be associated with learning how to grow food? How can you support organizations and programming that teaches individuals how to grow their own fruits and vegetables?
- Read about City Growers, an organization exposing kids to sustainable agriculture.
What is Giving Compass?
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Researchers worked with 16 elementary schools across Central Texas to install vegetable gardens and teach classes to students and parents about nutrition and cooking. The team specifically targeted schools with a high percentage of students on the free and reduced-price lunch program to understand how nutrition programs affect low-income groups. Each school was studied for one academic year.
The study, which involved more than 3,000 students in the third through fifth grades, found that students who participated in gardening, nutrition, and cooking classes ate, on average, a half serving more of vegetables per day than they did before the program. Lead author Jaimie Davis said, “Teaching kids where their food comes from, how to grow it, how to prepare it—that’s key to changing eating behaviors over the long term.”
Read the full article about school gardens by Esther Robards at Futurity.