Tag Archives: food

Does Gardening Encourage Kids to Eat Their Vegetables?

I’ve always been one of the lucky parents. My two oldest love their vegetables for the most part. I assume the baby will once she’s big enough.

I can’t really say that there’s a secret, as I’m sure that what we’ve done won’t work for every family. But it sure works for us.

I’ve often wondered if a part of it is that we introduced vegetables so very early. There’s some debate as to whether or not introducing veggies before fruits to a baby has any impact, but that’s what we did. We started our two oldest on green beans.

And when they got older, they loved green beans so much that they literally ate them like candy when we grew them in the garden for the first time. “Please, Mommy, can we have more green beans? Pleeease?”

It was cute. And how could I possibly say no?

The garden I think of as the other part of our secret. My kids love it. They love snacking from it. They love finding fresh food in it. They even had fun helping us plan it.

This year’s garden, unfortunately, is going to be inherited by whoever rents this place after we move out. I hope it happens soon enough that the garden survives. We’ve gotten some produce from it, and the kids have certainly been enjoying it all.

I won’t say my kids eat all the vegetables we’ve grown. But they’ve enjoyed most of it.

Mere exposure to a garden certainly isn’t enough. It took me a couple of days to get across to the neighbor’s kids that the front yard cherry tomato plant was not to supply them with ammunition for tomato fights. Grrrr!

I wouldn’t care if the neighbor kids wanted to snack on them the way my kids do, but I’m not going to encourage food fights! Such a waste. But they don’t like tomatoes, so they just saw them as ammo.

A big thing to remember is that even if the garden doesn’t encourage your kids to eat their vegetables, it can’t hurt to try. You’re increasing their exposure to fresh food, probably eating a bit better yourself if you’re the only one eating the produce, and so demonstrating better eating habits. It may pay off over a longer term.

What’s Happening to the Fish?

I’ve been coming across a lot of articles lately on how overfishing is running rampant. From the bluefin tuna being in danger of extinction to California closing the 2009 salmon season. And the situation is a lot worse than than.

Just read this article by Johann Hari on whether we could be the generation that runs out of fish. Ouch.

Then try Tree Hugger’s article on 10 fish you shouldn’t be eating.

The problem is quite simply overfishing. Too bad the solution isn’t so simple, as there’s too many big businesses relying on heavy fishing to survive, and they keep managing to keep the quotas too high for the stability of the population, and will no doubt fight the closures that need to happen.

Even though such moves would keep their businesses running for a longer time.

It’s one of the biggest problems we have, that so many people don’t want to take the steps necessary to preserve, well, anything, until it’s just about too late. We see this time and again. Pesticides and fertilizers and dead zones in the ocean and pollution and plastics, and, and, and….

It doesn’t stop.

These are the things that go beyond saying “well, I just won’t buy any.” That’s not good enough. Someone else will buy it. It’s not even enough for one government to say “stop.” That helps one area, one country, but more needs to be done.

As Johann Hari says in his article, at least 30% of the ocean needs to be closed to fishing, with strict quotas in the remaining 70%. That would take some incredible policing, but it’s what needs doing if we want fish in the ocean.

How Much Food Are You Wasting?

Most of us waste food. That’s the USDA said in 1995 that 27% of the food supply in the United States was wasted. That’s 96 billion pounds of wasted food. This isn’t something they check very often, so I can’t find more recent data than that.

But it’s pretty horrible.

A lot of it is restaurant waste, of course. If you’ve ever worked in one or even just paid attention to what people leave on their plates, you know. Excessive portions are a big problem.

You can help with that, of course, by taking your leftovers home. If you want to be really green about it, take it home in a reusable container you’ve brought from home.

But food waste at home is a big problem too. People buy more than their families can eat. They cook too much then don’t eat the leftovers.

It’s quite a waste of money as well as food.

So what do you do about it?

The first thing you can do is look at your shopping habits. Are you buying more than your family will eat before it spoils? Do you plan your shopping around a menu to control what you buy?

You also need to pay attention to your leftovers. I try to remember leftovers when I prepare my lunch. One of my sisters makes frozen meals out of them to take to work. Other people make casseroles or other recipes by combining leftovers. Figure out what works for you.

Of course, when food does spoil, think about how you’re disposing of it. If you can compost it for your garden, do so. It’s not as good as eating the food you bought for that purpose, but it’s better than throwing it in the trash.

Our Broccoli Has Bolted – Mmmm, Flowers!

I knew buying broccoli for a spring planting was risky. Even told my husband we should wait for fall, but he wanted to plant it anyhow.

boltedbroccoliSo it’s no surprise that it has bolted already.

One important thing to remember about bolted broccoli – it still tastes good. My kids are utterly delighted with the taste of the flowers.

We’ve trimmed some for dinner. It has a really nice, kind of sweet taste. I almost don’t dare steam or otherwise cook it for fear of ruining the flavor.

I’m also eager for the next heads to appear around where we trimmed it. My mother was telling us about how she grew broccoli when we were kids. The heads get sweeter with each trim, she says, as well as smaller. She said we would go out and just snack on them.

Sounds good to me. Now I’m just hoping we get enough enjoyment from the lettuce we planted. I managed to keep my husband from planting the spinach until fall, but he couldn’t resist some random varieties that were already started at the garden center.

Should You Avoid Food Additives and Coloring?

As a rule, I like to cook from scratch. Mostly because I enjoy it, but also because I like knowing what goes into the foods I feed my family. That’s not to say I don’t allow any packaged foods at all; my husband remains hooked on boxed mac n’ cheese, and so the kids love it too. We also enjoy boxed cereals. But I do what I can to avoid convenience foods and prepared foods.

Frankly, I find obvious food coloring to be pretty gross and unnecessary. We eat so many things that are a very different color from what they would be naturally and have been trained to think that that is how they are supposed to look. Kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

There’s a lot to be said for trying to get away from food coloring. There’s some evidence, after all, that getting certain types of food additives and coloring out of a child’s diet may help with ADHD. Not in all cases, but sometimes there appears to be a connection. If I had a child with ADHD, that is certainly one possibility I would test before using medications.

ADHD isn’t the only problem. As noted in Healthy Child Healthy World , which I reviewed recently, MSG is associated with reactions such as headaches and changes in heart rate. I remember my grandmother being very careful to ask at restaurants about MSG because it gave her so many problems.

I do notice that I feel better when I eat food I made from scratch, and I don’t think that’s just due to liking my own style of cooking. No doubt that’s a part of it, but I firmly believe that there is also something to do with the freshness of the ingredients and lack of preservatives, food colorings and other additives.

I don’t even like to use premade spice blends. Too many of those have too much salt or other ingredients I don’t want.

It doesn’t matter to me that my kids don’t have ADD or ADHD or any other conditions that might be made better by getting additives out of their diets. I don’t need most additives in my food. My kids don’t need them. Neither does my husband, but it doesn’t bother him like it does me. Can’t win all the battles, know what I mean?