Fruit And Vegetable Intake Amongst Children - 2198 Words

Amanda Suzzi Eubanks and Goldstein 201501-ISC205-G: Honors Coll-Current Events 30 March 2015 Cultivating Success - RD Fruit and vegetable intake amongst children is inadequate. Improving children’s desire to taste vegetables is thought to be the first step in developing healthier consumption patterns. When children grow food themselves, it increases access to vegetables and decreases children’s reluctance to try new foods. Even though a historical lack of funding has impeded the adoption of school gardens, edible education encourages students in healthy nutrition by promoting an appreciation of growing fresh vegetables which encourages students to replace junk food from their diets and maintain a healthy lifestyle. History School gardens†¦show more content†¦Gardening quickly gained momentum during first years of the twentieth century. The United States Department of Agriculture estimated that there were more than 75,000 school gardens by 1906. During both world wars, the United States Federal Bureau of Education encouraged youth to help the country through the Victory Garden programs and the United States School Garden Army. The tagline for the U.S. government’s youth gardening program in World War I was, â€Å"A Garden for Every Child. Every Child in a Garden.† During World War II, Vice President Henry Wallace said â€Å"On a foundation of good food we can build anything. Without it we can build nothing.† Then, interest waned because of the nation s drift towards a focus on technology. Throughout the past 75 years, there have been some movements to bring back the school garden, but none as vigorous as the period of intense growth that began in the early 1990s with the Edible Schoolyard in Berkley, California, spearheaded by Alice Waters and is driving youth gardening today. Background According to Susan Krebs-Smith, few children in the US appear to meet federal guidelines for daily consumption of fruits and vegetables. Researchers evaluated three days worth of food intake for children in the US. Nearly one quarter of all vegetables consumed by children and adolescents were french fries. Their intakes of all fruits and of dark green and/or deep yellow vegetables were very low compared with recommendations. Only 1 in