Plant a garden to grow your kids' desire for vegetables and fruit, new study suggests

If you are looking for a way to encourage your children eat their fruits and vegetables, search no further than your backyard, suggests new Saint Louis University research.

Preschool 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 preschool-aged children who live in rural southeast Missouri. They found that preschool 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 five 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, cantaloupe, 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 math 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

Related stories:

With over-weight kids the norm, parents are asking how much a toddler should eat
Where does the American tendency to become overweight begin? With 20 percent of Montana high school students being overweight and 10 percent of those qualifying as obese, the question is as relevant in Montana as elsewhere.
New attack ad on TV, but this one targets hot dogs
(AP) -- A new TV commercial shows kids eating hot dogs in a school cafeteria and one little boy's haunting lament: "I was dumbfounded when the doctor told me I have late-stage colon cancer." It's a startling revelation in an ad that vilifies one of America's most beloved, if maligned, foods, while stoking fears about a dreaded disease.
Helping the medicine go down
Getting little Doug and Debbie to take a spoonful of medicine is more than just a rite of passage for frustrated parents. Children's refusal to swallow liquid medication — and their tendency to vomit it back up — is an important public health problem that means longer or more serious illness for thousands of kids each year. In the case of HIV and AIDS pediatrics, missing a dose can be a life or death scenario.
Parents shape whether their children learn to eat fruits and vegetables
Providing fruits for snacks and serving vegetables at dinner can shape a preschooler's eating patterns for his or her lifetime.
Changing school environment curbs weight gain in children
Small changes in schools lead to big results when it comes to preventing childhood obesity, according to a study published in the April issue of Pediatrics. The school-based intervention, which reduced the incidence of overweight by 50 percent, offers a potential means of preventing childhood weight gain and obesity on a large scale.
Teens who have TV in their bedroom are less likely to engage in healthy habits
University of Minnesota School of Public Health researchers have found that older adolescents who have a bedroom television are less likely to engage in healthy activities such as exercising, eating fruits or vegetables, and enjoying family meals. They also consumed larger quantities of sweetened beverages and fast food, were categorized as heavy TV watchers, and read or studied less than teens without TVs in their bedrooms.
Children with healthier diets do better in school
A new study in the Journal of School Health reveals that children with healthy diets perform better in school than children with unhealthy diets.
Study links dietary folate intake to genetic abnormalities in sperm
Healthy men who report lower levels of the nutrient folate in their diets have higher rates of chromosomal abnormalities in their sperm, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

News discussion:

Medicine & Health news