School students to grow vegetables

DOHA: Elementary school students in Qatar will grow vegetables at their campuses as part of a new initiative to teach children about benefits of growing and eating healthy food.  The greenhouse initiative was launched at Al Bayan Independent Preparatory School for Girls on Sunday.
As children began planting seeds in pots, there was excitement and lots of chatter about how large the plants would grow and how much fruit and vegetables would be harvested.  The girls were told how to take care of the plants and helped by representatives of the organisations involved in the scheme.
The project is part of the Sahtak Awalan (Your Health First) campaign launched by Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) and the Supreme Council of Health (SCH) to encourage people to think about adopting a healthy lifestyle. 
The Minister of Public   Health H E Abdullah bin Khalid Al Qahtani said that unhealthy eating habits had led to chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and some types of cancer at an early age. 
An SCH survey last year showed 41 percent of citizens suffered from obesity and 91.1 percent ignored the daily intake of five fruits and vegetables recommended by World Health Organisation. 
Improving this requires a new strategy to consolidate efforts to create a healthy society, the Minister added. 
Elementary schools were selected by the Supreme Education Council to be part of the scheme and they will receive a greenhouse from the Sahtak Awalan campaign. 
They will also receive gardening equipment and vegetable and herb seeds. The children will be advised on how to grow seeds and they can then watch the plants from germination through to when the vegetables develop.
The children will then be able to take the produce home and eat the freshest, healthiest food. A competition will be held at the end of the growing season to determine which greenhouse had the best crop. The scheme will be extended to more schools in coming years.
The Minister said SCH had adopted many projects and programmes to change unhealthy habits and behaviours as part of the National Working Plan for Nutrition and Physical Exercise (2011-2016) to reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases and mortality rates associated with them in accordance with National Health Strategy goals.
The greenhouse initiative was launched by WCMC-Q and its strategic partners Qatar Foundation, SEC, Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil Qatar Inc., Occidental Petroleum of Qatar, Qatar Olympic Committee and Vodafone Qatar.
Dr Javaid Sheikh, Dean of WCMC-Q, said, “So many diseases that affect society today could be prevented if people adopted a healthy diet. With the greenhouse initiative we want to make sure our children know from an early age the foods they should be eating.”
The Peninsula