|
October
What I Learned From My Peas
This afternoon, while harvesting the last of the
spring peas, I wistfully recalled all the delicious
pleasure they have given me. But since I think the
same way I water my tomatoes—deeply but
infrequently—I began to ponder a more profound
question: What have I learned from these peas?
Food has become so complicated in our society.
It’s been industrialized to make it cheap and
plentiful, with the ironic result that simple whole
foods are more expensive than highly processed
products. Another result is an epidemic of
lifestyle-related health problems among our young
people, many of whom don’t have enough
opportunities to exercise, eat healthy food or
spend quality time around a family dinner table.
Experts and policymakers have sophisticated plans
to address various aspects of this complex problem,
but out there in the garden, I realized there is a
simple solution to our nation’s public health
crisis: Everyone should grow peas.
Governments at all levels have programs to
promote wellness. One hopes they do some good, and
at least they’ve gotten rid of that confusing
food pyramid (“Ooh, sweets and fats are right
at the top—they must be the most important
things to eat!”). But Congress can’t
legislate healthy diets, although it could change
the subsidy policies that favor high-fructose corn
syrup over fresh produce.
And the President isn’t going to issue an
executive order mandating 30 minutes of daily
physical activity. That would just politicize the
issue. Rush Limbaugh already tells his listeners
that exercise must be bad because
“liberals” like the Obamas advocate
it.
Nor can we expect the food industry to improve
access to healthy food. Sure, fast food companies
have launched some high-profile campaigns, but they
are mostly just absurdly funny attempts to appear
to care about nutrition and health, like the recent
announcement that for every MegaJug of soda they
sell, participating KFC restaurants will donate a
dollar to diabetes research. Or the decision by
McDonald’s to add oatmeal to its breakfast
menu, but only after adding more sugar than a
Snickers bar and a bunch of processed ingredients
in a highly creative effort to turn a healthy,
simple, whole food into junk.
No, press releases from corporate PR departments
notwithstanding, the good food news is not
happening at the drive-thru. It’s happening
right in our own backyards. And in community
gardens, many located in urban “food
deserts,” where a pea patch may be the
neighborhood’s only source of fresh veggies,
and a good place for young people to be active and
spend time with positive role models. In a place
like that, kids are bound to internalize some good
health values along with their peas.
Many programs address individual pieces of the
health crisis in more or less effective ways, from
bike lanes in cities to calorie charts in
restaurants. But gardening is a comprehensive
approach that addresses all the underlying issues
associated with lifestyle-related health problems.
The simple act of planting a pea is actually an
amazingly efficient form of multi-tasking. A kid in
a garden is imultaneously creating healthy food,
exercising, experiencing nature and engaging with
the community.
Gardening is subtle exercise, like yoga, and its
benefits may not be readily apparent. The first
time you see a group of people doing yoga, you
think: That’s not exercise, they’re
barely moving! Then
you try it, and the next day you’re sore in
muscles you didn’t even know you had. Garden
exercise is also slow but powerful. Turning soil
with a pitchfork is a fantastic cardiovascular and
upper-body
workout. And when you’re done planting a
pea patch, you’ve done several hundred squats.
Weeding and harvesting keep us on our regular
workout schedule, and when the season is done, we
have a huge pile of vines to chop with a shovel for
the compost pile. Talk about motivation: The finer
we chop the material, the faster it will turn into
beautiful compost for the garden.
Together, all these elements of growing peas add
up to a holistic health treatment. But just as
important is what we’re not doing: sitting on
a sofa, looking at a screen, absentmindedly
shoveling chips into our maw. Gardening is a
lifesaver for people like me, who love good food
and tend to over-indulge, because no matter how
hard you try, you just can’t eat too many
peas.
This is what I really love about the garden: It
validates my vices by channeling them into harmless
outlets. In the pea patch, I can binge on as many
sweets as I want, and my gluttony just gives me a
massive dose of vitamins, fiber, protein and omega
fatty acids. I find peas as sweet as candy, but
they have exactly the opposite effect on us: Peas
have a unique combination of phytonutrients that
researchers believe actually reduces the risk of
type 2 diabetes.
Peas have a similar beneficial effect on the
garden itself. Rather than depleting soil
nutrients, peas fix nitrogen, improving the soil
for the next crop. Gardening does the same thing to
people. According to a recent survey, over 80% of
today’s community gardeners were exposed to
gardening as children. So when a grownup plants a
pea patch with a child today, it improves the
chances that the kid will grow up with an
understanding of real food and a desire to grow
it.
Amid all the nationwide efforts to improve
public health, a pea patch reminds us of a simple
truth: A small thing can make a big difference.
Peas seem designed for the small scale of a
kid’s hand or a community garden plot. All you
need is a handful of dry peas, sown just an inch or
two apart. Unlike tomatoes or pumpkins, peas
don’t need a lot of room. In fact, like urban
gardeners, they thrive on density, quickly growing
into a thick jungle of strong, lush vines. We can
string some twine between posts to provide a little
outside support, but mostly the peas support each
other. They grow close enough to hold each other
up, in yet another obvious metaphor for the
community garden itself.
And in just a couple months, the vines yield a
surprising abundance of pods stuffed with delicious
peas. They even come pre-packaged in
environmentally friendly, compostable wrappers,
making them easy to share and enjoy right in the
garden.
I started growing peas in an urban garden plot,
but this year, in my own suburban yard, I’ve
discovered that peas turn every garden into a
community garden. You have so many, you have to
invite, then beg, the neighbors to hop the fence
and pick some.
Peas bring people together, in the garden and
around the family table. I’ve spent the last
several evenings at the dinner table with my two
boys, shelling peas, laughing and talking about
everything from Gregor Mendel to Star Wars. Sure, I
had to agree to pay them for this work, but I
don’t mind. It teaches them the value of work
and calculating their wages even gets them doing a
little math during the summer. The original deal
was a penny per pea, but I wildly underestimated
the harvest and soon realized that having a few
bags of peas in the freezer for the winter was
going to cost me several hundred dollars. I tried
to convince them it was a misunderstanding, that I
had promised to give them each a centipede, not a
cent a pea. They didn’t buy it and do not
desire arthropods as pets, so I had to
renegotiate.
The point is, we were together at the table,
having a meaningful conversation about food. Most
amazing of all, the whole time we sat there, my
sons were absentmindedly popping super-healthy
fresh vegetables into their mouths. And that was
priceless.
© 2011 John
Hershey
Other Father Issues,
Books
* * *
Parents are the bones on which children sharpen
their teeth. - Peter Ustinov
John Hershey
is a dad, a writer, and a lawyer (in that order).
He writes a syndicated biweekly humor column about
parenting and family life.. His columns have been
published or accepted for publication on websites
and in magazines around the world, from Maine to
Oregon, Colorado down to Texas, and down under in
Australia.
Blood, Phlegm & Bile:
Parenting with Humor appears monthly on
menstuff.org. But, why the gross title? Well, for
one thing these are three substances with which
every parent becomes quite familiar. They were also
called the "humors" by medieval scientists who
believed that the proportion of these bodily fluids
determined a person's health and temperament. So
it's a pun! A pun requiring a lengthy explanation,
but a pun nonetheless
E-Mail
Contact
Us |
Disclaimer
| Privacy
Statement
Menstuff®
Directory
Menstuff® is a registered trademark of Gordon
Clay
©1996-2023, Gordon Clay
|
