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“Can we have some carrots?” 

An unusual request for a second grader? Not for Malcolm X Arts & Academic Magnet School students Terra Dudley and Emma Tadlock, who like to spend their recess time planting flowers and vegetables in the school’s organic garden. 

“Look at this cabbage,” says Malcolm X Garden Coordinator Rivka Mason in mock despair. “They just come and eat the leaves.” 

The demand for fresh vegetables out of the garden is so strong that Mason has taken to demanding garbage in exchange for veggies. 

“If you can find five pieces of trash anywhere on the playground you can get a carrot,” Mason tells Dudley and Tadlock, explaining, “This is how we keep the playground clean.” 

A community coalition working to educate the public about nutrition programs in the Berkeley Unified School District hosted an afternoon of gardening and healthy snacking at Malcolm X Friday. 

Parents perused healthy recipe books and sampled fresh fruit from the Berkeley Farmers Market as students planted in the garden, made fresh squeezed lemonade and played a game designed to broaden their exposure to different kinds of edible plants. 

Thanks in part to $1 million in grants from the California Nutrition Network, BUSD has built four school gardens (including the Malcolm X garden) and hired cooking and gardening instructors to work at all the district’s elementary schools, said BUSD Garden Resource Coordinator Travis Smith. 

“We’ve found that when kids plant vegetables they will eat them,” said Beebo Turman of the Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative. “It’s an ‘if they grow it they will eat it’ kind of philosophy.” 

The basic idea behind the programs is to impress upon the students, on a daily basis, the importance of exercising and eating well – specifically, at least five servings of fruit and vegetables each day. In addition to classes, many schools have organic salad bars at lunch, afterschool physical activity programs and field trips to the Berkeley Farmer’s Market. 

“It’s going to be reinforced every day they come to school that eating healthy is going to influence the rest of their lives,” Smith said. “This will do a lot to alleviate diseases in our society like cancer and diabetes.” 

In the United States, childhood obesity has doubled in the last ten years and Type 2 diabetes in children has tripled in the last five years according to BUSD Nutrition Network Program Supervisor Erica Peng. 

But it’s not just about nutrition. 

“Not only do we see the clear health benefits, but also the significant impact that improved diet, better nutrition and adequate exercise have on students’ self-esteem, confidence and ability to learn...,” Peng said. 

In addition to teaching students how to prepare healthy meals, from the garden to the kitchen, cooking and gardening instructors work with the rest of the faculty to help reinforce lessons in culture, history and math.  

Mason plans to plant corn, squash and beans at the end of the year to deepen students’ understanding of Native American agricultural practices. She has planted beets, red onions and purple carrots in the past to help a class of third graders see how some cultures make clothing dyes from plants.  

“It’s bringing the culture into agriculture,” Mason said