The benefits are home-grown
Research shows that growing fruit and veg helps our health
It’s long been thought that growing your own is better for our overall health, but now scientists at Sheffield University have completed a study to prove it. The report was compiled after students from the university’s School of Biosciences spent a year following household food-growers to assess their production, purchase, donation and waste of fruit and vegetables. Results proved that home-growers could produce around half of their annual vegetable consumption, 20% of their fruit supply and overall eat 70% more fruit and veg than the UK national average.
Dr Zilla Gulyas, the author of the study, said: “Eating at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day is associated with significantly decreased risks of developing health issues like obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, and could help prevent associated deaths and cut healthcare costs worldwide. “Our new study highlights the role that growing fruit and vegetables at a household scale could play in increasing their consumption.”
She added that growing more in our gardens, allotments, windowsills and balconies could play an important part in helping to balance out the effects of climate change, including the destruction of crops by flooding as has been seen in the UK this winter, and improving food resilience in the face of hostile weather and conditions. The report also says that there is a need to pull down the barriers, many of them socio-economic, preventing more people from growing their own and having access to increased amounts of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Dr Gulyas added: She said: “We need to find ways to overcome socio-economic challenges to upscaling household food production, especially among those most affected by low fruit and vegetable intakes, like low-income families. Increasing the amount of space available to UK households to produce their own food is essential to this.”