Raising awareness amongst children: Vegetable Garden Robins

A great way of teaching children to enjoy vegetables!

Context

Eating habits picked up during childhood have a lasting effect on how we eat when we are older*. Therefore it is essential to get children interested in vegetables from an early age. This is the purpose of the operation “Les Robins du Potager” created by the Foundation in the spring of 2006 for school children aged 7 to 11.
 

Resources

After an initial phase of raising awareness in the classroom, it is in gardening clothes, basket in hand, that the little citizens visit the vegetable gardens. After having unearthed the vegetables, the budding gardeners change into cooks and prepare 3 delicious recipes. It is the French TV chef and cookery book writer Julie Andrieu who has specially designed these recipes for the operation. She also helps the children to prepare the recipes. To finish the session, the dishes are shared and enjoyed with evident pleasure. Is that where the adventure ends? Certainly not, since afterwards the children have only one thing on their minds: to share the dishes that they have lovingly prepared!
 

Results

The key figures concerning the operation were gathered by a study conducted by the research institute Louis Harris 2, before and after the operation.

• Even if the children have a very health-based image of vegetables (spontaneous words most associated with the word ‘vegetables’: health, vitamins), nevertheless 55% of the children don’t see vegetables as being fun to eat (LH2 study – 2006).
• After the operation, there is a significant drop in the number of children declaring that they don’t like vegetables.

•  The operation “Les Robins du Potager” received an excellent satisfaction rate (96% of children enjoyed the day).

• The vegetable picking and the cooking excited their interest in these vegetables and in the way of preparing them in a dish (91% of the children said that they would like to learn other vegetable-based recipes).
• The greatest reward is perhaps the following result:
• 67% of children having participated in the operation “Les Robins du Potager” say that they would like to eat vegetables more often.

So who said vegetables weren’t fun to eat?
 

 All the survey results (in french)

* HAYMAN, L.L., 2010. Starting young: promoting a healthy lifestyle with children. The Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, volume 25, n°3.p. 228-232.