Leave It Better organization gets kids excited about veggies through gardening
鈥淐an I have seconds on salad, please?鈥� is not something middle-schoolers ask everyday. Most kids prefer the high-fat, low-nutrient tastes of foods like French fries or pizza to anything leafy, green, or fresh.
But one organization, , has found a way to get kids excited about eating fresh vegetables by teaching them to grow produce from seeds. The program gives kids an activity that enhances their hands-on knowledge of earth science, and also lets them take pride in the accomplishment of consuming something that they, not some distant factory, produced.
Last fall, Leave It Better constructed gardens in ten schools and worked with students to plant and harvest lettuce. Alongside the gardening lessons, the kids learned about composting with worm bins - and later used their own compost to grow greens.
Over the course of the year, students were given small HD cameras to . As the schoolyear ended, the kids gathered at the New York Botanical Garden for a viewing of their documentaries, as well as a picnic with freshly-harvested salad from the gardens they had maintained all year.
Graham Meriwether, Leave It Better鈥檚 founder, has a background in documentary filmmaking. After seeing Al Gore鈥檚 film about climate change, 鈥淎n Inconvenient Truth,鈥� he felt horrified at the planet鈥檚 prospects. But Meriwether also saw the power of film to educate the public about serious environmental issues, and he got the idea that telling positive stories could be just as important as shedding light on problems.
鈥淲e鈥檙e facing so many challenges, we don鈥檛 really have time to point fingers anymore,鈥� explained Meriwether.
Apart from educating kids about gardening and healthy eating, Leave It Better has produced a full-length documentary film called 鈥�,鈥� that focuses on the complexities of the meat industry in the United States. The documentary will premiere in Virginia theaters in July, and will begin showing in select theaters nationwide in August.
One of the film鈥檚 main subjects is , in Virginia, where farmer Joel Salatin is leading a movement to raise meat without antibiotics, outside, and on a small scale.
Salatin has recently begun a deal with nation-wide burrito chain Chipotle to sell meat from his farm to their locations in Virginia. in their restaurants, including dairy products from pasture-raised cows, and they are beginning to expand their sustainability mission by purchasing locally-produced meat in some regions.
鈥淎t the moment, local/regional meat is something we are doing on a pretty limited basis,鈥� said Chris Arnold, the Communications Director for Chipotle, in an e-mail to Dowser.
鈥淲e also have a growing commitment to using locally grown produce,鈥� Mr. Arnold explained, 鈥渁nd plan to use some 10 million pounds of produce from local farms (those within 350 miles of our restaurants) this year.鈥� (GOOD Magazine recently to use locally-sourced produce.)
For a large company like Chipotle, which has more than 1,100 restaurants in 35 states, going local presents some challenges.
鈥淭o make this work at our size and scale, you really always have to start small and build,鈥� said Arnold.
"Start small and build" may as well be the motto of the sustainability movement, and Leave It Better is a fitting example. Each child who learns to garden, and each viewer who learns about the meat industry, is one more person who can make an educated choice about using the earth鈥檚 resources and eating healthfully.
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