Eat A Little Healthier

It's funny, I work for the local alt weekly, but I don't always read the entire thing each week. It usually takes me several days to get through th front of the book and a review or two and another few days to get to the feature. I did just read Angela Valdez's education article on the Urban Nutrition Initiative.

[the UNI] teaches students to cultivate their gardens in the hope of instilling in them healthy eating habits and an awareness of the culture and politics of food in America

Now isn't that a novel idea? Teach them young and they will benefit from this knowledge for the rest of their lives. What's that old adage? "Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime"

One of the out-of-the-box ideas UNI has come up with? A hip-hop healthy foods bus.

Sometime before the new year Gerber hopes to launch a mobile food cooperative aboard an old city bus donated by SEPTA. Blasting a hip-hop soundtrack, the bus will ferry vegetables and fruit from student-run gardens to far-flung Philadelphia neighborhoods.

It'll be like a Rockafella van, but with produce instead of T-shirts. Cool, eh?