Food Education

Vegetables and fruits are vital parts of balanced diet and are good sources of essential micro nutrients such as vitamins, minerals as well as dietary fiber.Adequate nutrition is crucial during childhood and adolescence and a diet rich in micro nutrients is crucial for good physical growth and mental development as well as prevention of infectious and chronic diseases. The need of increasing vegetable and fruit consumption by children is currently receiving much attention due to rise of childhood obesity.

Children are current and future consumers and need dietary guidance to create lifelong healthy eating habits. Home environment and schools are increasingly recognized as important settings for promoting healthy eating practices in children. Nutrition education, the promotion of healthy diets in school, abundant fruits and vegetables in school meals, parental involvement and nutrition related activities such as food gardening or food preparation, can significantly increase young people’s knowledge and improve their dietary habits and most importantly encourage them to eat more fruits and vegetables.

  

The main purpose of Toucheng Leisure Farm is to enhance the availability and consumption of vegetables as a main source of micro nutrients. So the children can have a greater knowledge of indigenous vegetables and also facilitate increase of their overall vegetable consumption. Toucheng Leisure Farm increases the exposure, availability, and preference for the fruits and vegetables grown as children’s participation in food gardening usually results in significant increase in vegetable preferences.

Eating behaviors of people living together are similar and therefore parental eating behaviors and healthy home environments should also provide opportunities for children to develop and practice healthy behaviors.

Unfortunately, in the era of modern technology and fast pace society, parents usually lack opportunities to spend time with their children during lunch and dinner time due to raising social acceptance of working long hours, overtimes and due to the fact that they increasingly seek the career goals instead of being orientated on family values. They prefer to substitute their absence in involvement with their children by providing them with financial resources which are often misused as their children’s consumption choices are influenced by exposure to media and fellow teenagers to buy fast and junk food rather than healthier vegetables and fruits. Parents are not only sacrificing their time with their children but they also are facilitating children’s unhealthy dietary intake patterns for the future.

What must parents do to make sure that their children eat properly and can control their temptations to buy fast and junk food? This would require parents and schools to partner together. Parents cannot change behavior at home if schools do not encourage active involvement in learning how to use media, and schools cannot change behavior if parents are irresponsible with their children's media use and eating.

Food education at schools and multiple trips to the farm field would create better opportunities to educate children about nutrition. As children have more media exposure, their nutritional knowledge and reasoning about healthy versus unhealthy foods decreases. On the other hand schools have the ability to teach children about what to eat, but parents have the power to change habits. Schools and parents could more extensively collaborate with plantations like Toucheng Leisure Farm to expose the children to natural environment. Let them grow their own vegetables and so create an emotional connection in terms of “creating a life”. They would gain deeper knowledge of indigenous vegetables and would be able to distinguish different kinds of fruits and vegetables in the stores as well as learn about their health benefits what would consequently influence their future consumption preferences.

The good news is that the evidence shows that parents can successfully treat their child's obesity by actively changing the whole family's approach to diet and physical activity and Toucheng Leisure Farm is willing to assist them to the maximum possible extent in these efforts.