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Get Healthy With Home Garden Vegetables Growing your own vegetables has a multitude of health benefits for the whole family. Consider the vitamins, nutrients and fiber you'll acquire from eating your harvest. If you can get your kids to help with the planting and weeding, they're more likely to eat what they've grown. Make your vegetable garden a family project. "Growing your garden as a family is a good way to get kids to eat vegetables," says Sara Burzy, CFCS, regional specialist on nutrition and food at the University of Vermont Extension System. "Kids learn where the vegetables come from and they will try a variety of vegetables. They are much more likely to eat what they grow." Fresh vegetables have the greatest nutritional value when eaten raw. If you've grown the vegetables yourself, they taste better than any vegetable you can buy because you worked so hard to get them to your table. But there's scientific evidence that fresh-from-the-garden food may actually be more nutritious than produce that travels many miles, then waits in the store for weeks before it even gets to your refrigerator. One study involves a favorite garden choice: the tomato. In its February 1991 edition, Vermont's Eating Well magazine reported a study they had done to compare a vine-ripened garden tomato with a store bought "winter tomato" grown in Southern Florida and shipped to its place in the supermarket produce case. The results were striking: Garden Tomato (versus store-bought tomato) 980 IU/100g Carotene (versus 980 IU/100g Carotene)Add those important nutritional benefits to the beauty of a Vermont summer and the fun of watching vegetables journey from seed to table, and there's just no reason not to dig a starter plot in your yard or a community garden and get growing! With a little effort, your whole family can share a bountiful and delicious harvest all summer and fall. |
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