Alexander students planted their own gardens this week as part of a two-year project to improve their health.
Grades 1 to 7 students got their hands dirty Monday to plant 25 indoor gardens at the Kipohtakaw Education Centre in Alexander. The gardens, called Earthboxes, are part of a two-year study by the community and the University of Alberta on children's health.
The students, many wearing headbands with paper vegetables on them, got to work piling dirt and planting seeds after getting instructions from principal Ray Soetaert. "You are going to be showing the rest of the community what it's like to grow your own food," he said.
Students will spend the rest of the school year looking after the boxes, Soetaert said in an interview, and will get to eat their produce through the school's hot lunch program. Teachers will also use the boxes in their lessons.
Many young Canadians are overweight and at risk of diabetes, Soetaert said, and these gardens could be the solution. "First Nations people are very close to Mother Earth ... what better way to learn that than to grow your own food?"
Health study
The project is part of a multiyear study of children's health under way in Alexander, according to Noreen Willows, professor of food and nutritional science at the University of Alberta and one of the researchers in that study.
Initial work by the team's researchers suggested they could improve student health by getting them to eat more nutritious foods, Willows said. "Anything that can be done to encourage children to eat more fruits and vegetables will have a number of positive outcomes," she said, such as lowering the risk of cancer and diabetes, for example, and better weight control.
Research suggests one of the main determinants of a child's willingness to try new foods is familiarity, Willows said. "If children know what something is, they're more likely to try it." She and fellow researcher Anna Farmer theorized that having students grow and eat fruits and vegetables at school would make them more likely to eat or ask for them at home.
Enter the Earthbox Kids program. Run by Alberta Agriculture's Brent Andressen, the program has students raise their own fruits and vegetables in indoor planters to help them understand the source of their food. The boxes have previously been deployed at St. Albert's Albert Lacombe School, Andressen said — this is the first time that they have been used on an Alberta aboriginal reserve.
Today's students often know little about food production, said David DyckFehderau, coordinator for the Alexander Earthbox project. "I heard a story [from Andressen] where a child wanted to plant cheese seeds. She just didn't know where food comes from."
Alexander students will get to watch celery, tomatoes, radishes, herbs and more spring out of their garden boxes over the next few months, DyckFehderau said. "We're hoping to make a full salad." As they do so, teachers will get to use the plants in their science and health lessons.
Willows said she and her team plan to survey the students' nutrition habits to see if their diets improve after two years with the boxes. They also plan to track how teachers use the boxes in their lessons to create a model for other on-reserve schools.
The boxes could have other benefits, according to DyckFehderau. A test run of the boxes at the reserve's elders' lodge this summer helped bring elders and youths together to tend them and got staff more interested in home gardening. Some elders also found it relaxing just to watch the veggies grow.
The students should be able to harvest their first vegetables in a few months, Willows said.
