Want to dress just like Michelle Obama, but can’t afford to? You can replicate her garden instead!

Local Harvest (.org) has put together a list of seeds similar to those that will be used in the presidential veggie garden. If you’re considering your own home-ag project, it’s worth a look. The carefully plotted White House garden will feature a lot of green leafy stuff with at least five varieties of lettuce as well as spinach, snap peas and broccoli (apparently the Obamas are NOT broccoli-phobic), promising a bounty of antioxidants and a lot of fun times for the receiving chefs. All this seasonal cool Mid Atlantic produce we assume will be followed by tomatoes and squash later on.

The kitchen garden also will be a wonderfully aromatic venue with lots of herbs like sage, chamomile, thyme, marjoram and rosemary. And there will be flowers, in particular, marigolds and nasturtiums, which are known for attracting beneficial bugs and deterring pests, demonstrating the technique of “companion gardening” popular with organic growers in which flowers complement and assist the veggies. Think of it as bipartisan support.

It’s already mid-March and that means the snows will melt and if the ground’s not too saturated farmers will soon be planting seeds for the food that will feed us this year.

Since time immemorial farmer’s markets have been with us: farmers harvest, bakers bake, dairy farmers milk their cows and they all meet at a central location where there’s lots of foot traffic … and they sell. The common theme: the food is fresh.

In addition to the standard organic fruits, vegetables and eggs, farmer’s markets offer items you wouldn’t usually consider: hand-made brooms, herbs, bath and body care products, lobster rolls, wine, organic teas and “traditional handcrafted leather goods and repair”, rabbits, natural and dyed yarn and spinning supplies, photographs of local scenes, elk and moose meat, organic spice blends and increasingly, fresh fish.

1. It’s locally grown

Most but not all Farmer’s Markets in the US require vendors to have grown, produced or crafted what they sell at the market. Most vendors are small, one- or two-person operations and they grow only what they can manage. They grow what’s in season and it’s local. Ask the farmer if they grew what they’re selling, ask if it’s organic. Don’t buy until you’re satisfied with their answers.

2. You know the farmer personally

You know where the farm family lives; you’ve seen their farm, your children go to school with their children, you see each other at church or at Little League games or at a movie. You know the farmer and you trust him. He’s a neighbor.

3. It’s where the chefs and restaurateurs shop for fresh produce and baked goods

Patrick Soucy, chef at a Portsmouth, N.H. restaurant that specializes in New American cuisine, buys at the local farmer’s markets because of the “better health, better quality” of the food.

“And the produce defines ‘tree-ripened’. It’s fresh. ”

Raj, chef at an Indian restaurant in southern Maine, buys there “because it’s local, within a 20-mile radius. It didn’t come here from California. Also, I support the local community.”

4. Prices are often cheaper than supermarkets

… but not always. Organically-grown and the small-operation produce is very labor-intensive. Individually planted by hand, individually nurtured during the growing process and then individually harvested by hand obviously takes a tremendous amount of time. But the local farmer doesn’t have the tremendous labor, mortgage, transportation and other expenses of a supermarket, so cost comparisons show that all-in-all the farmer’s market sells food for less than a supermarket.

5. There’s less of a carbon footprint: field to farm

What about the bananas at a supermarket in America that come from El Salvador, the berries from Chile, and the kiwis from Australia … how can they possibly be their freshest when they were harvested so early in their growth process and they grew older on their journey? Local produce usually travels less than 10 miles from field to market. Take a bite from a store-bought peach and then take a bite from a locally-grown peach. As chef Patrick Soucy says, “I needed five napkins to wipe my mouth after biting the locally-grown peach”.

If people who ran the highest risk of obesity and Type 2 diabetes were offered more fruits and vegetables to offset or prevent these health risks, would they eat them?

Resoundingly, yes.

Study after study shows that when low-income populations have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, they significantly improve their diets.

Yet, in most neighborhoods, fast food and convenience stores, not known for their wealth of fresh produce, are the most accessible choices for shopping.

A public health advocacy report by UCLA and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy called Designed for Disease: The Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes found that the state of California had four times as many fast food restaurants and convenience stores as it did groceries or public produce markets. (The picture is likely the same or worse in other states.) The study further found a high degree of correlation between access to healthy food and an increased incidence of diabetes. This was exacerbated in lower income areas, where for many residents walking or public transportation are their only means of getting around.

The solution: Bring farmer’s markets to more urban areas. It’s greener and healthier.

Across the country, public health and community planners are joining forces to help change attitudes and eating habits by bringing farmer’s markets to lower-income residents. Community health clinics and government offices that provide vouchers, and other types of programs are bolstering these initiatives. Recently, WIC vouchers were amended to include fresh fruits and vegetables.

One of those new markets is in Brownsville, Texas, where the community and the University of Texas School of Public Health have come together to help increase awareness of the links between diet, obesity, and diabetes – and found an enthusiastic response.

Out of the 400 residents who shop weekly at the new Saturday market, 80 percent of them say they are eating more fruits and vegetables, and 78 percent are eating a wider variety of fruits and vegetables.

Surveys indicate that 84 percent of shoppers find the market produce better than they have seen elsewhere.

According to the CDC, obesity in Hispanic populations, as in all ethnic groups, is increasing, along with Type 2 diabetes. Texas’s Cameron County, which includes Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley, has twice the national average of diabetes and obesity.

Hispanics ages 18-44 have the highest prevalence of diabetes (6.8 percent) among all ethnic age groups in Texas and it is the fourth leading cause of death among Hispanics in the state, according to the Texas Diabetes Council.

What’s the main culprit? Processed carbohydrates and refined sugar. But fruits and vegetables exert an opposing force. They can help protect against diabetes because they contain natural sugar, says Rose Gowen, M.D. medical director of the Clinical Research Unit at the UT School of Public Health who also chairs the market’s board of directors.

“Mexican American diets are high in foods such as flour tortillas, beans, rice, and lard that are mostly processed carbohydrates,” she explains. “Not all carbohydrates are bad; it depends what kind they are. Fruit are carbohydrates but they contains natural sugar, which makes all the difference. We want to minimize carbs from processed foods, which, more often than not are also ‘empty calories’.”

The addition of fruits and vegetables also can make a significant difference even to those who already have type 2 diabetes or weight problems.

“A lower carbohydrate diet with more nutritional value can lower weight and control blood sugar,” says Gowen. “These two factors, together along with exercise, can improve many people’s health to the point that they need to take less or don’t need medication at all.”

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

With the locavore ideal so much in the media these days and produce of vague origin sparking so many health scares, you’d think the last thing a city would go out of its way to do would be discourage local growers. Especially if those growers are adorable little girls.

But that’s just what happened when sisters Katie and Sabrina Lewis, aged 11 and 3, were told by the city of Clayton, CA (northeast of San Francisco) they had to shut down the stand where they’d sold their own produce for the last three years.

It all started when a neighbor (annoyed in part by a compost pile) complained about traffic stopping to buy melons and zucchini from the girls, who typically set up a card table every other Saturday and put the dollars they earned in college savings accounts. Officials decided to enforce zoning laws prohibiting such commerce in the area, despite the fact that America rarely punishes its budding capitalists for running lemonade stands, offering cheap snow-shoveling, or neglecting to file a 1040 on their paper-route income.

In the ensuing public debate, Mayor Gregg Manning took a law-and-order stance, telling the Mercury News “at the end of the day, it’s a zoning violation” while the girls’ father refused to accept that an exception wouldn’t be made for such a minor enterprise, especially one that supplied local families with fresh, fear-free veggies.

And now, after a bit of TV and blog coverage, the Lewis patriarch has had his way: The Planning Commissioner of this city of 10,000, admitting that the stand was “in keeping with the flavor or image of Clayton,” said the girls can go back to selling their wares. After a hearing in which numerous neighbors praised the girls for nurturing, harvesting, and selling their own little crop, the city (over the Mayor’s objections) agreed to revise its ordinance to de-criminalize them — and to make a special agreement with the Lewis household giving them explicit permission to continue until the wheels of legislative action set everything in stone.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media