School gardens are a great help in teaching children (and parents) to eat healthy but the experience of a Mexican school, supported by FAO, also shows how they help to increase school performance
Taking care of a vegetable garden is a pleasant, relaxing and stimulating activity for the mind. Having to deal with seedlings to grow in order to then be able to taste the fruit of one's work is also very useful for children, a simple and effective system for teaching them the importance of healthy eating.
To remember it is the FAO which summarizes the benefits of the "school gardens" in 5 points:
- Taste and learn about healthy food
- Learn how to grow fruit and vegetables
- Develop teamwork skills
- Promote better nutrition
- Learning to value the work of those who grow our food
The experience of Mexico
A case in point of how having a school garden looked after by students can make a difference comes from Mexico. Here, and more precisely at the General Lázaro Cárdenas school in Ajalpan, in the heart of the Mexican province of Puebla, the pupils plant, harvest and eat together what they care for and grow to maturity.
In short, the involvement of pupils in the initiative goes far beyond simply sitting down and having lunch together every day. In fact, the 96 students, with the occasional help of their parents, personally contribute to the cultivation of food in the school's own garden.
For this purpose, some raised beds have been placed by the country's ministry of agriculture in collaboration with FAO, after a study by the local NGO, SURCOS, found high levels of malnutrition in the Náhuatl community in the city of Ajalpan. In this community, as many as 87% of young people suffer from health problems caused by improper nutrition, which in turn is a consequence of the economic difficulties in which families live.
The garden therefore gives children the opportunity to eat healthily. This in fact produces 13 different types of vegetables and is also home to a chicken coop.
The presence of the vegetable garden, Moreover, it also improved students' grades. As the director of the school, José Cirilo Cruz Peralta said:
We are discovering that poor student grades are definitely caused by unhealthy diets. It was a good time to try to connect these two things and draw something positive out of them.
The garden is a great teacher
The director who is also a professor in the school uses the garden to teach children how to take care of themselves and the environment while other teachers use it to teach multiplication and division while pupils use rulers to measure perimeters and areas for sowing.
And the natural science lessons, needless to say, find their "natural habitat" in the garden.
To learn biology, however, very useful are the hens, which produce between 15 and 18 eggs a day, excellent for preparing students' lunch.
But this project managed to do much more: it has extended to families. Following the example of the school, some parents have also created their own gardens at home and have decided to close the snack shop that was located in the school complex. Now snacks, processed foods and junk foods have been replaced by chard, carrots, spinach and cauliflower.
In short, even parents have become more aware of the importance of a healthy diet. As one mother who has children in school said:
We decided to close the shop because it was selling everything we know is not good for our children. This type of food does terrible damage to their bodies, affecting everything from the teeth to the intestines.
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Source: FAO
Read also:
- Gardens in schools: the wonderful revolution of educational gardens
- The nursery school that teaches from an early age to grow their own food
- Orthotherapy: nature is a real cure (even against stress)
