Studies Show That Kids Who Garden Enjoy More Health Benefits As Adults

While the connection between being close to the earth and a healthy lifestyle seems self-evident, the science backing up those intuitive claims is only just beginning to surface. (Fortunately, it’s also confirming many long-held assumptions.) As school was beginning last year, Dan Nosowitz at Modern Farmer wrote about a new study released that finds a substantive connection between early gardening habits and healthy eating choices later in life. As Nosowitz writes:

“The study was simple: A survey of 1,351 college students looked at their fruit and vegetable intake and compared it with whether the student had participated in gardening as a child. But the findings were stark: Those who had gardened as children consumed about 15 percent more fruits and vegetables than those who hadn’t.”

Want to get your kid involved with gardening but not sure where to start? Taking a cutting of a geranium is an easy (and almost disaster proof) first step. If you’re short on space, making paper planters for air plants still offers a sense of the outdoors.

Read the rest of the study at Modern Farmer.