Transcriber: Helena Bowen Reviewer: Denise RQ
About 20 years ago, probably before most of you guys were born,
this is how we usually ate.
We sat around the table with our family meal.
You guys are a great group, so I'm expecting positive answers here,
but how many of you have had family dinner with your family
and had a chat in the past week?
Actually, only about half of you.
How many of you have eaten in the car in the past week?
Also about half of you.
This is the problem I'm going to talk about,
because this is what we've become.
As a nation, food is not food, food is fill.
The results are disastrous.
One in seven kids go to kindergarten obese.
One in three of you guys will graduate high school with diabetes.
Obesity is the epidemic of our day.
I'm guessing you guys don't see a lot of it because you're in Denver,
but frankly Denver is one of the major hot spots in the country,
and I'll explain in a minute.
How did we get here?
Probably around when most of you were born, 1995,
we were doing pretty well.
Almost no state was over 20% obese.
You can look at the slide,
and the only state was Indiana, it was in pink.
It was the only state with over 20% obesity.
Fast forward to 1998,
and over ten states are now over 20% obese.
We go to 2000, and you just start seeing
how quickly the world and The United States has changed.
By 2002, we start seeing over 30% obese.
You can see it getting worse, in 2006.
By 2008, Colorado is the only state under 20% obese.
The rest of the country over 30% obese.
Don't be proud, we've broken 20%.
We're now over 22% in Colorado.
The rest of the country, on average, 46% obese.
We are a nation of a very large and unhealthy people.
Why is it your problem?
You are off to the races, you're going to do some fun stuff,
you're going to build great things, whatever you do.
Well, it's your problem because it cost us $450 billion in 2010.
That's four times the annual cost of the Iraq war,
that's three times the annual cost of universal health care.
How many of you guys want universal health care?
(Applause)
Alright!
We're not going to get it, because we're spending our money on this,
and it's getting much, much worse.
By 2018, when it is truly your problem, it is expected to double.
Childhood obesity went from 5% in 1974 to 17% in 2008.
Colorado, our wonderful state.
Come on, our wonderful state!
(Cheers) (Applause)
It's a great state, I love my state.
We're not doing well either.
We're in the middle of the pack, about 23rd in the country,
with 14% in childhood obesity.
So what are we going to do about it?
There's one thing that I've found
that every single one of you guys can do to make a difference.
It's a very simple thing, and it's called the school garden.
When you put a school garden in an elementary school,
a middle school, or a high school,
you will double the intake of the fruits and vegetables
of the children in that school
for two and a half portions a day to five portions a day.
As an added bonus, test scores, when you teach kids in the garden,
how to do science, history, math, literacy, whatever you choose,
you can increase scores by over 15 points on 100 point scale.
It's a no-brainer, and it's super easy for you guys to do.
Why am I here, why am I talking about it?
I actually saw this problem,
I've been watching it for about eight years now,
and helping it in different ways,
and about two years ago, decided to form a non-profit
that would help people like you put gardens in your schools.
There's your own school, whether it's the middle school you just left,
or the elementary school your younger brother or sister are at,
or you just want to help out.
I created a non-profit called The Kitchen Community.
What we do is we help put learning gardens in schools around the country
to fight childhood obesity and to improve test scores.
They are very different to traditional gardens.
Traditionally, gardens and what we've worked with and supported
are rectangles, they're in the corner of the school yard,
and usually they have a fence around them.
Children are not invited in, they're very hard to teach in,
and also they're kind of seen as a thing that will fall apart in a few years
when people forget about it.
So we really went out to change that perspective,
and we created the learning garden.
The learning garden is a place where kids will want to play.
It's designed to have no fence around it,
it's designed to make teachers want to teach in it.
They may want to teach science and really make a difference in their test scores,
or they may want to read a book, and be outside.
That connection to nature, which our children have lost,
we need to get them back into it, and this is one way to do it.
Then, the other thing is that it is not a temporary structure.
It is something that is built into the school ground.
It's part of the playground.
The fact that it is an extension of the playground is essential
to allow kids and teachers to enjoy it whenever they want,
to enable the community to enjoy it afterwards,
to really get those kids connected back to real food.
A couple of innovations we've built is our beds will fit in any schoolyard.
You've got a school that has a rooftop, or only has a parking lot,
or a school that has toxic soil, which many of them unfortunately do.
Our garden beds are modular, they're like LEGO blocks.
You can move them around, design them as you see fit.
You can have a lot of fun with it,
create a maze-like organic structure very easily,
and it can sit on any environment.
The other great thing about it is that these are super easy to install.
I know you want to make a difference,
but I know that you don't have all the time in the world,
so I wanted to come up with something that was very easy for you
to take to your school tomorrow and have it done by Monday.
These garden environments can be put together extremely quickly
with a handful of volunteers, and you can do it tomorrow.
We also create art elements for the kids,
giving the kids ownership so they feel like they're part of it,
so while you might put it in your younger sister's elementary school,
you want your younger sister to participate in it
planting vegetables, but also painting, enjoying it, and adding some art to it,
really making it feel like it's theirs.
We've had a lot of support in Colorado.
Governor Hickenlooper is awesome.
He has been a great supporter of what we do,
and what other non-profits in the garden environment
have done in the Colorado area,
and across the country there has been an enormous amount of support.
There will be a lot of help for you if you go out and do this.
The other thing we do is also help on the funding,
so if you have a school that you would like to put a garden in,
and I would like every single one of you to do it,
we actually help fund it.
We look at the low-income, under-served nature of the school,
and we can create a measure
of how much we will subsidize the costs of the garden for you.
The goal is that any school can have it:
whether you're an extremely under-served community,
in a food desert, or if you're downtown,
we want every single school to have a learning garden.
Send me an email.
I get this email, and I would love you all to send it to me and say,
"I'd like a garden in my school."
Thank you very much.
(Applause)