Cathy Isom tells us how gardening could be teaching your kids to eat fruits and veggies later on in life. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
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Gardening as a kid may have some long-lasting benefits that carry on to their adult-life. That’s according to a University of Florida study which sought to understand the connection between gardening as a kid and habits later in life. Specifically, during the time when kids go to college and are most likely to pass on the fruits and veggies and gobble up gigantic plates of bad fried food. The study was part of an initiative from eight American universities with the name of Get Fruved, which apparently stands for “fruits and vegetables.” More than 13-hundred college students took part in the survey that looked at their fruit and vegetable intake and compared it with whether the student had participated in gardening as a child. The findings were stark: those who had gardened as children consumed about 15 percent more fruits and vegetables than those who hadn’t. Interestingly, the study also asked whether any of the college kids grew up in a gardening family but did not actively participate in gardening themselves, and found that the mere fact of being around gardening did not have an impact on one’s dietary habits later.