How to combine exercise and diet in one acivity: Should hospitals teach patients how to grow vegetables?

Google has a vegetable garden

Google was doing it in 2007: In Growing our connection to food, Google explained they launched a mini-farm on campus with 300 self-watering containers. The correct name for the containers is sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) and they can be purchased commercially ($30) or made from plastic totes.

Sports team has a mini-farm

San Francisco Giants have a mini-farm on their stadium growing kale, Swiss chard, lemon grass, sage and more. The garden—one of the first of its kind at an American sports stadium—comes as a bizarre sight to some fans who associate stadiums with more traditional fare. But the Giants say that the Garden, as they call it, promotes healthy eating. In a city with no shortage of fussy foodies, it has attracted its share of devotees.



Hospitals could be next

The Giants garden may be an almost utopian oasis of tranquility, with its rows of lushly packed planter beds and water-conserving, vertical garden towers. But it is also a popular vantage point—complete with tables and seating. Fans who want to stay planted inside the garden can still watch the game action through a series of cutouts in the center-field wall or follow it on one of TVs.

Quoting the late author Lewis Grizzard, it reads: “It’s difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.”

It is possible that hospitals that focus on wellness initiatives may be interested in launching their SIP-powered gardens as an educational initiative for patients and staff.

Related videos:



Google Garden Planting. Executive Sous-Chef Jennifer Johnston leads a team of volunteers to plant a Growing Connection garden on Google campus.



Google Garden Harvest. Rebecca Jepsen from Santa Clara County Master Gardeners helps Jennifer maintain and harvest the garden.



The Growing Connection Gardens at Google. Google Chief Internet Evangelist and Co-Chair of the Global Advisory Board of The Growing Connection Vint Cerf stopped in and helped unveil The Growing Connection's Gardens at the Googleplex on May 1, 2007.

References:

Official Google Blog: Growing our connection to food http://buff.ly/1oC2lkr

For San Francisco Giants, the Star of This World Series Is a Vegetable Garden - WSJ http://buff.ly/1sY8qpM

"Food gardening is the most intelligent adult endeavor on earth and ought to be understood by anyone who eats. You eat healthier, fresher, tastier food, enjoy gentle exercise, and make new friends." Source: http://amzn.to/RpbdJx

Gardening helps you burn calories - 160 calories for 30 minutes of gardening http://buff.ly/1ekjB7L

Why Gardening is Good for Your Health (infographic) http://bit.ly/10JAhzU

He who plants a garden plants happiness. — Chinese proverb

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New way to lose weight - color everything blue to suppress appetite?

The color blue suppresses appetite more than any other color. Apart from blueberries and plums, which are mostly purple, there are few naturally blue foods. The hypothesis is that in the remote past, when humans foraged for food, blue was a warning of spoilage or danger.

The Buffet Blues by National Geographic: Everyone loves an all you can eat buffet, but controlling our appetites can be a bit of a struggle. We’re testing to see if a simple change of scenery can impact peoples’ portion sizes.

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Around the table - National Geographic video

Chefs and authors discuss the importance of the communal meal:



The Future of Food. Chefs Jose Andres and Barton Seaver talk about the importance of food as a resource and how we can save it:

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Why eating insects makes sense: same protein, less fat than beef, better for the planet (Economist video)

From The Economist: "An unusual way to boost the food supply and feed people sustainably: by eating less meat, and more insects.

About 2 billion people already eat bugs. Mexicans enjoy chili-toasted grasshoppers. Thais tuck into cricket stir-fries and Ghanians snack on termites. Insects are slowly creeping onto Western menus as novelty items, but most people remain squeamish. Yet there are three reasons why eating insects makes sense.

First, they are healthier than meat. There are nearly 2,000 kinds of edible insects, many of them packed with protein, calcium, fibre, iron and zinc. A small serving of grasshoppers can contain about the same amount of protein as a similar sized serving of beef, but has far less fat and far fewer calories.

Second, raising insects is cheap, or free. Little technology or investment is needed to produce them. Harvesting insects could provide livelihoods to some of the world’s poorest people.

Finally, insects are a far more sustainable source of food than livestock. Livestock production accounts for nearly a fifth of all greenhouse-gas emissions – that’s more than transport. By contrast, insects produce relatively few greenhouse gases, and raising them requires much less land and water. And they'll eat almost anything."

Typical cattle requires roughly 8 pounds of feed to produce a single pound of beef. Insects on the other hand require only 2 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of meat, making them four times as efficient.

Wikipedia has an article on Insect farming, and an open-source DIY kit is available.

Thailand is the world leader of insect farming and consumption. Here is how they do it: http://www.fao.org/docrep/017/i3246e/i3246e.pdf



Crickets are the latest health food craze - CNN - In the crowded health food market, there's a new bug taking hold - the cricket. http://bit.ly/1B1WNnB

Related:

Forget the vegetable patch! This kit lets you grow your own edible INSECTS to help cut down on meat eating. Daily Mail, 2013.

RT @CfA_research: The majority of shrimp allergic persons were found to be allergic to mealworm, so eat insects with caution! #FAAM2014 -- Why not eat insects as alternative protein source? Insect components are included in many processed foods, so you eat them already. Do we need to have a caution text: may contain traces of insects?

Entomophagy (eating insects): cricket chips and power bars taste like almonds with a hint of bacon. http://buff.ly/1D8dbSf -- McGill University Chirp reactor is a countertop cricket farm: Crickets are the gateway bug for people who haven’t eaten insects before. A beta version is currently on sale for $150, although Dzamba also offers DIY instructions for free.

Could insects be the wonder food of the future? BBC, 2014 http://buff.ly/1sJqCWu

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