“You can grow anything. People have grown some crazy stuff with the towers,” Nate Storey, a tower farmer in Wyoming stated in a recent article from Civil Eats. “We’ve grown tomatoes and very large statured crops, watermelons. It works until they’re about 20 pounds apiece and then things start falling." Growing indoors in rural Rocky Mountain West, tower farms like these help rural areas provide fresh produce to locals without strain of the harsh climates during winter. Wyoming is considered to have the largest ranches and farms, but the fewest number of vegetable farms of any state. Having an easily accessible source for local fresh produce is important to Wyoming as many foods are shipped in from other areas and may not stay fresh as long. Latinos living in rural ...
San Antonio Food Bank is encouraging healthy living by encouraging runners, walkers, and bikers to use a phone app called Charity Miles. How does it work? The app tracks the miles of the person walking, running, or biking and corporate sponsors donate towards the athletes charity of choice. The app allows those exercising to donate their miles completed towards food access to San Antonio (63.2% Latino), where many Latino families live without access to fresh foods. 1 mile running or walking equals .25 cents, biking gives .10 cents per mile. Providing ways to help people donate to their favorite charities may help highly Latino populated cities like San Antonio to take advantage of free technology and get in more physical activity all while providing healthy foods and a local ...
A new report, The State of Obesity: Better Policies for a Healthier America, shows the rates of adult obesity among Latinos exceeded 35 percent in five states and 30 percent in 23 states. Top three states with highest adult obesity rates overall were reported as Arkansas, West Virginia and Mississippi. Highest rates of obesity were shown within the Midwest and South states, and show ethnic disparities in low-income Latinos and less-educated Americans. Many studies show Latino children live in areas where there is less access to healthy foods and less safe play areas. Latinos living in these areas need to be aware of obesity’s rising rates, as the report shows that more than one in ten children become obese as early as ages 2 to 5. Obesity rates of Latino children ages 2-19 ...
Latino kids consume more sugary drinks than average, part of the reason they're more likely to be overweight/obese than their peers.
What can be done?
You're invited to join a webinar at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday, Sept. 30, to learn about new local and national efforts to improve Latino kids' access to healthy drinks.
The webinar, sponsored by the national Council of La Raza (NCLR) and including Salud America!, is bringing together a panel of experts to highlight successful efforts from across the country to improve beverage choices and healthy environments in schools and other community settings: Rosalie P. Aguilar, MS, Project Coordinator, Salud America!, Institute for Health Promotion Research UT Health Science Center at San Antonio (the team behind SaludToday)
David Thomsen, ...
100 gardens in New York Schools, future jobs and college opportunities for underserved students...these are all just "Si se puede! moments", states Stephen Ritz, a 4th grade teacher that is changing the Bronx from the inside out. In food insecure (37%) and highly Latino populated Bronx County (54.8% Latino), New Yorker and 4th grade teacher, Stephen Ritz became a game changer for healthy foods. Starting gardens in classrooms since 2005, Ritz has relied on free resources, his own passion for healthy changes, and a heart for underserved kids to birth the Green Bronx Machine. Producing over 30,000 pounds of healthy fresh produce a year, changing students futures, and re-designing cities with living green graffiti walls, Ritz's passion for kids and communities to have ...
How does math calculate with gardening? Giving students a hands-on approach to calculation, social studies, science and more, schools like Hannah Elementary School in Beverly, Massachusetts ( 17% Latinos in MA) are opening their doors to a garden classroom education. Students are able to conceptualize life cycles of bugs and anatomies of seeds. School gardens become places of inspiration for creative writing or art. Green City Growers, City Sprouts, and Berkeley's Edible Schoolyard project are all about gardens being interactive classrooms where students learn to grow their minds and their knowledge of healthy foods like fruits and vegetables. Learning about healthy foods and incorporating these foods into Latino kids diets and classrooms are important in areas where ...
Healthier Generation is launching #Commit2Ten, a campaign challenging the nation to add 10 more minutes of physical activity a day. Studies show Latino kids have less active spaces and are more likely to be overweight than their peers, allowing 10 minutes of fun physical activity in their environments whether in school or at home may help them achieve a healthier lifestyle. The website of the campaign states that more than 80% of Americans or physically inactive. They also state that no federal law requires physical activity for students in schools, and that only 1 in 3 children are physically active everyday. The resources for the commit to ten's campaign website encourages students and people of all ages to commit to 10 minutes a day of some type of physical ...
Studies show that diet and exercise play a large part in Latino children's risks of type 2 diabetes. A recent study by Lund University in Malmo, in Sweden, analyzed that people who tend to drink sugary beverages, also tend to have poor diets as well. The study looked at 25,000 overweight volunteers between 45 and 74 years of age, and calculated their diets with a weekly food and beverage consumption journal and questionnaire. Computer modeling of the intake of foods calculated with the volunteers diet, age and other factors, showed that drinking more sugary beverages was associated with eating fewer healthy foods. People who tend to drink sugary beverages were less likely to eat healthy foods like yogurt, fish, high-fiber breads, fruit and vegetables, according to the ...
Need help on getting funds for your school or communities initiatives for food projects, want to know how to engage the community towards healthy food access projects? Healthy food access portal was launched in 2013 by PolicyLink, The Food Trust, and The Reinvestment Fund to help communities looking to have healthy food access with resources to develop their ideas and businesses. Webinars are available as a resource on subjects like funding healthy food projects with the USDA, helping with store designs, as well as on subjects like women and entrepreneurs of color starting food projects. New information is always being added, so check out the full site ...
