Category: Vegetables

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School gardens

[I]nstead of building up and knocking down an army of straw men from a distance, Luke Tsai actually visited the [Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California] garden to see how it works and talked to the teachers and principal about the Edible Schoolyard.

What a strange idea, to go and look at something you’re reporting on and see what the people involved make of it, rather than just using your own gut feelings. But Luke Tsai did just that before he wrote about The Edible Schoolyard. Let’s hope this kind of effort never catches on. The Ethicurean wrote about Tsai’s piece and gives lots of context and links.

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Tomatoes in Ghana

Cotton farmer suicides in India get all the press, but three years ago we noted briefly the apparent suicide of tomato growers in Ghana. Today sees a meeting in Accra “for a unique exchange of views on how to revive the strategic but ailing tomato sector.” Farmers, traders, processors, academics and donors will be thrashing out a more strategic approach to the tomato sector in Ghana under the watchful eye of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and IFPRI (the International Food Policy Research Institute). IFPRI anticipates that:

Improvements across the board could reduce Ghana’s reliance on low-cost imported tomato paste, improve its foreign exchange reserves, and provide employment and development opportunities in poor rural areas.

How many wins is that?

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Nibbles: Consortium?, Sheep diversity, Sustainable biofuels, Agroforestry, Almonds, Chicken breeding, Restoration, More tree management, Vegetable gardening, Wheat domestication

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Would you like some broccoli with that sesame (street)?

Annals of Important Research: An Economist blog post alerts me to a study that has apparently roiled the blogosphere, and that I slept through. Elmo ((A Sesame Street character, M’Lud.)) can make broccoli attractive to children. ((I find it hard to believe that there’s an actual Elmo Broccoli, but who knows?)) Bottom line:

[I]n the control group (no characters on either food) 78 percent of children participating in the study chose a chocolate bar over broccoli, whereas 22 percent chose the broccoli. However, when an Elmo sticker was placed on the broccoli and an unknown character was placed on the chocolate bar, 50 percent chose the chocolate bar and 50 percent chose the broccoli. ((Bloggers have sneered at the “fact” that any child would voluntarily choose broccoli; I’m not one of them.))

Then you dig (or rather, you read someone who dug) and discover that the fight wasn’t broccoli vs chocolate, it was photo of broccoli vs photo of chocolate. But then that’s OK, because on the basis of 104 kids looking at photos of foods, the Sesame Street Foundation scored a big grant to see how a larger number of kids would relate to actual food items. As the Man Who Dug reports:

Hmmm. And what happened to this study? Beats me. If it ever got completed, I can’t find it. That might be because I don’t know how to search for it properly, or it might be because it produced null results and therefore got tossed in the same dustbin as all the other null results that make for boring reading and never find a home. If anybody knows anything about it, let us know in comments.

Commenters did indeed supply some extra information, including this study, which showed that 10 low-income African American children were more likely to choose and eat a healthy food after playing an “advergame” in which the goal was to get their computer to character to eat healthier foods and beverages.

Every little helps.

Ya don’t suppose parental example might have something to do with the foods children choose, do ya?

The data suggest that children begin to assimilate and mimic their parents’ food choices at a very young age, even before they are able to fully appreciate the implications of these choices.