Page 33 - Allotment Gardener Issue 2 2024

THE DIETARY BENEFITS
OF ALLOTMENTS
For the last six months I have been taking part in
a food research project run by Urban Harvest at
Sheffield University. The project follows on from the
work of the MYHarvest project and will assess how
diet (particularly fruit and vegetable intake) varies
by season for food growers, and the impacts on
Perhaps having home grown food just beyond our garden gate does influence what we buy and eat.
I appreciate how much my diet is influenced by what we grow on the allotment; most days we are eating something we have grown. Not just the fresh produce, pulled or picked from the plot but also stored food. We take it for granted that we store and preserve our surplus harvest, from the different storage requirements of potatoes, onions, garlic and squash, (plus
the regular checks for rot), to drying grapes, tomatoes and apples in the dehydrator; pickling; making chutneys and jams; storing dried beans; stewing down tomatoes into sauces and the plain old freezing of beans and other fruit and veg.
It seems it’s not only our diet that is affected by growing our own food but our lifestyle too.
But of course you know this, you do it too.
Mark Joynes
SW Regional Representative
nutrition.
Each month, for 3 days, participants are asked
to complete an online food diary, using the ‘Myfood24’ software programme, recording everything they eat and drink over those three days. There is a database for the food and drink and as you type a food or ingredient, a list of items matching your food will pop up for you to choose from. You can also create and save your own recipes to add to the diary.
I was surprised to see the number of items that popped up when I searched for something; there were over 200 matching items for ‘baked beans’ and over 4000 for ‘bread’. One of the more unsettling aspects of these searches
was the amount of processed and prepared
food there was. ‘Roast dinner’ brought up 60 ready meals and ‘sandwiches’ 1000 brand-name sandwiches!
Completing the food diaries each month has made me realise how much the shopping habits of my partner and I are influenced by having
an allotment. We rarely look at ready meals in supermarkets and most meals are cooked from scratch. Is this because we were brought up with ‘mother’s home cooking’ and picked up basic skills as children helping in the kitchen? I thought it might be because we are retired and have the time for this indulgence, but we were doing it when we were both working full-time and bringing up our own children.
“Completing the food diaries each month has made me realise how much the shopping habits of my partner and I are influenced by having an allotment”
Allotment Gardener | Issue 2 2024 | 33