There was a great piece in The New York Times last week on
vegetable consumption in the U.S. The article was prompted by a
recent CDC study, which found that only 26% of Americans eat
three or more servings of vegetables per day; disappointing news
but hardly a surprise. Most of those interviewed in the article
take a pessimistic tone when responding to the study’s findings.
Here are a couple illustrative quotes: “Eating vegetables is a
lot less fun than eating flavor-blasted Doritos,” said Marcia
Mogelonsly, a senior analyst for Mintel, a global marketing
firm. “You will always have to fight that.” “There is nothing
you can say that will get people to eat more veggies,” said
Harry Balzer, the chief industry analyst for the NPD Group, a
market research company. …“Before we want health, we want taste,
we want convenience and we want low cost.” Despite the article’s
generally dour tone, it did provide strong academic support for
a key component of a better food system – edible gardens that
are integrated into s