Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Diabetes in the Garden?

I was going to write a diabetes valentines post for this blog. I was going to write something pithy about love equaling food, and try to relate that somehow to overloading yourself with love and getting diabetes. I was going to write this in the context of the Let's Move campaign started last week by First Lady Michelle Obama. Because the First Lady has started vegetable gardening at the White House, and has been promoting it heavily, I thought it would be easy to tie this all together here but it's not.

When I started researching Let's Move last weekend, I found a lot of criticism of the campaign and when I looked through letsmove.gov I found a poorly designed site, which is too wordy and links too much to other poorly designed websites. Not to mention that Let's Move barely alludes to the garden's role in people's health. I did find this really interesting (when it works) Food Environment Atlas on the USDA website.

Childhood obesity is a very serious issue. One of the reasons I'm excited about working on Veggie Trader is that it is a direct way for people to find, share and eat healthier food. How cool would it be if 10 year olds are swapping cherries for grapes this June? Or if a child can post (with her parent's permission of course) their garden abundance, making new gardening friends online? Hopefully this site will inspire some new gardeners and encourage others to regard an empty lot as a potential source for food.