Growing Food and Kids

Whether you like President Obama’s plans for healthcare reform or not, who can argue with his idea to open a farmer’s market right outside the White House?

At yesterday’s National Health Care Forum, while responding to a question about how his family stays fit, Obama offered up this latest idea:

“So, you know, Michelle set up that garden in the White House? One of the things that we’re trying to do now is to figure out, can we get a little farmers’ market outside of the White House,” he said. “And that is a win-win situation. It gives D.C. more access to good, fresh food, but it also is this enormous potential revenue-maker for local farmers in the area. And those connections can be made all throughout the country, and has to be part of how we think about health.”

Absolutely. We can’t just think about health in terms of insurance reimbursements, and primary care physicians versus specialists, and surgery versus therapy, and cost, cost, cost. We have to start thinking about health in terms of what we put into our bodies and how the foods we eat often translate (over time) into either wellness or illness.

As Obama noted yesterday, “if we went back to the obesity rates that existed back in the 1980s, the Medicare system over several years could save as much as a trillion dollars. That’s how much our obesity rate has made a difference in terms of diabetes and heart failure and all sorts of preventable diseases.”

I’d love to see a farmers’ market on the White House lawn. But I’m just as happy to see farmers’ markets in my own community (like the one my family visited Thursday evening at Jack-O-Lantern Farms in Muscle Shoals, Ala.). And I’m even happier to see growing numbers of backyard gardens, where families are taking their food — and their health — into their own hands.

Think we’ll ever actually see a White House Farmers’ Market? Think it’s a good idea?