Gardening Benefits- Can You Dig It?
Get Your Hands Dirty!
Growing your own food can be one of the best things you do for your health and your wallet. It’s not just relaxing, but it also helps you know exactly what’s going into your body and what you are feeding your children or loved ones. With more concerns than ever about pesticides and chemicals in our food, gardening gives you more control and peace of mind. Beyond that it helps bring wider diversity to your gut microbiome which provides positive impact body wide. This study also showed that gardening families also ended up eating a larger variety of plants, higher fiber intake and more nutrient dense foods, all of which lend itself to better health outcomes!
Increasing our variety of plant-based food intake reaches even beyond microbiome support. Plants are powerhouses for many different compounds that provide us with benefits. Many of these compounds provide us benefits beyond what we are even currently aware of. Some of the benefits that we have more recently discovered in research are properties such as protecting us against cancer, decreasing our risk around cardiovascular disease, protecting us against diabetes, protecting our brain health and more! This is a very cool side benefit to being a gardener.
And gardening also helps our nervous system. When we are in contact with the dirt and soil we are participating in grounding. Grounding aka earthing, is a practice when individuals make direct contact with the Earth’s surface- think naked feet on naked ground. This passive practice can vastly reduce inflammation, promote wound healing, prevent and treat chronic disease and help promote balance within our nervous system.
How To Choose What To Grow?
A group called the Environmental Working Group (EWG) helps people navigate the grocery store. They do this by preparing two lists every year based on the current production of food in and into America. These two important lists are the “Dirty Dozen” and the “Clean Fifteen.”
The Dirty Dozen is a list of 12 fruits and vegetables that have the most pesticide residue, even after you wash them for the pertinent year. This list usually includes items like strawberries, spinach, apples, and kale, common things you find in your grocery store. However, since farming practices are always changing and sourcing of our food can alter year to year, they do the research for us and update it every year accordingly!
If you check out the list and find you eat a lot of the dirty dozen, growing them yourself can help you avoid those harmful chemicals. Or you can make the informed decision to invest in your health and the health of your family but purchasing those particular fruits and veggies by purchasing the organic produce option. In your own garden, you can skip the sprays or use natural ways to keep bugs away.
The Clean Fifteen is the opposite. It lists produce that usually has very little pesticides. Things like avocados, onions, and sweet corn are often on this list. Again, this list is updated every year! If you don’t have much space or time to garden, these are the safer ones to buy at the store. Or if you don’t have the garden space and you are still wanting the benefits of financial savings- you can feel more comfortable skipping on the organic price tag on these items.
You’ve Got The Power!
Gardening gives you the power to decide what goes into your food. If you’re growing items from the Dirty Dozen list, you can use compost, avoid chemicals, and try simple tricks to keep bugs away. Consider neem oil for example or even diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth in not only a pest control but also provides benefits to your soil to produce happier, healthier produce for your family.
Side benefit, fresh picked food tastes way better than store-bought, and it hasn’t been sitting in a truck or on a shelf for days. You have so many food preparations available to you when you have access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
When you grow your own food, you also learn more about how food works. For example, what grows best in your area, when to plant, and how to care for soil. Many people say they start eating healthier too, simply because it is more available to them. And what feels better than eating something you grew yourself?
Gardening is also better for the Earth. You use less plastic packaging, reduce how far food travels, and avoid adding more chemicals into the environment. Choosing to grow your own “Dirty Dozen” crops in a natural way helps the environment while benefiting the health of yourself and your family.
Boost Your Mood & Grow New Skills
Gardening and growing your own food can also improve your mental health. Spending more time outside in nature can reduce your stress. This provides you with added protection against depression and anxiety. If you already struggle with depression or anxiety, more time outside can improve your overall mental health. There is a lot of benefit to routine. Caring for a garden helps us build a daily routine. Water the plants, pull weeds, check health of the plants, harvest your food, etc. This routine helps balance your nervous system and quiet mental health concerns.
Most of us don’t know how or were never taught to garden. This is a dying art that we would all benefit from saving. Learning new skills such as how to grow our own food provides us with a mental boost! Our brains are built to stretch, grow and be challenged. Putting ourselves out there to learn new skills builds our confidence and resilience. Beyond that, teaching a new skill, to our children for instance, helps promote their mental health as well as building their confidence.
The Bottom Line: Dig In!
In the end, gardening helps you eat cleaner, save money, feel good about what you’re putting on your plate and overall just feel good! Using the EWG’s Clean Fifteen and Dirty Dozen lists as a guide makes it easy to decide what to grow at home and what to buy from the store and how to feel confident saving money where you can.
Building a new skillset is hard but worthwhile. The benefits to gardening reach beyond your wallet and improve your gut health, reduce your risks around diseases such as cancer, autoimmunity and cardiovascular disease but also support your mental health. Go out on a limb and dig in!
If you are looking for more individualized support, you need additional gut health support or you just want to make sure you have your health moving in the right direction check out our website today to see if we would be a good fit for you! Happy gardening friends!
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