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Category Archives: children

Answer the poll and help Cooking Matters Colorado

February 7, 2013 – 7:30 am

The Kashi REAL Project™ is committed to helping solve the Real Food Deficit, and as a part of their ongoing efforts, have partnered with the non-profit Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters® Colorado. Cooking Matters Colorado is tackling the Real Food Deficit by equipping families with the tools to make healthy meals at home, practice responsible food shopping, shift budgeting behaviors, and teaching children and families healthy eating habits that last a lifetime. For every poll answer, $1 is donated to help Cooking Matters Colorado** expand their cooking skills courses to more families and help build stronger, healthier communities.

In your community, what is the biggest challenge to healthy eating? | The Kashi REAL Project | causes.com.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in chefs, national food system work, Polls/Surveys, taste education | Tagged Colorado, Share Our Strength | Comments (0)

If children lose contact with nature they won’t fight for it

November 29, 2012 – 7:30 am

Good language in here for project proposals that involve taking student groups to farms and gardens. That the number of children involved in creative outdoor activities fell so quickly is shocking and can be addressed by activities that markets organize. Also, how access to nature can be a creative stimulant for later learning could also be the basis of your project for your targeted market day activities.

The remarkable collapse of children’s engagement with nature – which is even faster than the collapse of the natural world – is recorded in Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods, and in a report published recently by the National Trust. Since the 1970s the area in which children may roam without supervision has decreased by almost 90%. In one generation the proportion of children regularly playing in wild places in the UK has fallen from more than half to fewer than one in 10. In the US, in just six years (1997-2003) children with particular outdoor hobbies fell by half. Eleven- to 15-year-olds in Britain now spend, on average, half their waking day in front of a screen.

In her famous essay the Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, Edith Cobb proposed that contact with nature stimulates creativity. Reviewing the biographies of 300 “geniuses”, she exposed a common theme: intense experiences of the natural world in the middle age of childhood (between five and 12). Animals and plants, she contended, are among “the figures of speech in the rhetoric of play … which the genius in particular of later life seems to recall”.

Studies in several nations show that children’s games are more creative in green places than in concrete playgrounds. Natural spaces encourage fantasy and roleplay, reasoning and observation. The social standing of children there depends less on physical dominance, more on inventiveness and language skills. Perhaps forcing children to study so much, rather than running wild in the woods and fields, is counter-productive.

UTNE Altwire – If children lose contact with nature they won't fight for it.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in agricultural tourism, articles, community gardens, farmers markets, farmers/farming information, public health, social cohesion | Comments (1)

Allergic levels higher for urban kids

July 2, 2012 – 7:30 am

Urban kids have more allergies.

Data revealed that the odds of food allergies were significantly higher in more densely populated areas as compared to rural areas and small towns. Rates varied significantly from almost 10 percent prevalence in urban centers to only 6 percent in rural areas. The study also found that the most common food allergy was for peanuts, and milk and soy were two of the most consistent allergies throughout the various demographic areas.

One explanation for a higher prevalence of food allergies in urban areas is that exposure to certain “microbial agents’” or agitants earlier in life may somehow protect a child from developing food allergies later in life. Kind of the same argument for people who use sanitizers too much on their hands and become more susceptible to getting sick as it weakens their immune system. Either way, the association between food allergy prevalence steadily rose as population density rose as well, which makes it clear rural kids are far less likely to suffer from an allergies than their city-dwelling counterparts.

So, once again like in the Dirt Adds Value story from the NYT, linked on this blog, we need to be part of the natural world from the beginning for so many reasons. Farmers and farmers markets contribute to that familiarity and need to be recognized for that.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in articles, environmental issues, farmers markets, farmers/farming information, public health | Comments (0)

Eat healthy — your kids are watching

June 4, 2012 – 7:30 am

Good market newsletter article and as markets that have begun to reach out to families know, you need to involve both parent and child in the market.

Eat healthy — your kids are watching.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in articles, case studies/research, farmers markets, incentives, reports | Tagged Science Daily | Comments (0)

Life Skills Bread Baking Program: King Arthur Flour

March 22, 2012 – 8:34 am

An employee-owned company since 1996, King Arthur Flour has some impressive programs and values. Check out this wonderful baking program they offer

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in civic engagement, Main Street, national food system work, useful websites | Tagged King Arthur Flour, Vermont | Comments (1)

Whole wheat pizza – well it’s a start..

January 26, 2012 – 3:25 pm

Students to see healthier school lunches under new USDA rules.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in articles, Farm To School | Comments (0)

Food app for kids

December 1, 2011 – 12:45 am

Taggie, a smartphone app developed by recent Dutch design school graduate Niels van Hoof, allows users to direct a smartphone camera at the barcode of food items to learn about their origin, growth process, and different varieties. After recognizing the scanned barcode, Taggie launches a 3D augmented reality animation to engage children with a short, fun lesson about the food.Van Hoof developed the app as a graduation project for the Design Academy in Eindhoven, Netherlands after being inspired by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. “He went to schools and tried to find out if kids know where food comes from,” van Hoof says. Perhaps needless to say, most of them didn’t—which set van Hoof’s wheels in motion. Van Hoof hopes that by using the app, children will “discover more about fruits and vegetables and [will not be] afraid of the product anymore, which results in living healthier.”