How To Raise The Next Generation Of Healthy (And Eco-Friendly) Eaters

However, there's one simple practice that you can do with your kids that will make them actually want to eat whole, plant-based foods while also fostering their love for the environment around them. I'm talking about growing your own food.

I caught up with James Boyer, NYBG's vice president for Children's Education, for his advice on how to teach children to eat healthier and be little stewards of the environment while they're at it.

Boyer's top piece of advice? Grow some of your own food at home—even if it's just on your windowsill. If you don't fancy yourself much of a green thumb, start with easy-to-grow crops (PSA to parents in the New York area: radishes, lettuce, carrots, and basil all have short growing seasons—so if you plant them right now, you can get a small harvest come winter!), and learn together with your child by trial and error. Including your kid in the process will teach them where their food comes from and boost their confidence in the process. "There's something very beautiful about the sense of accomplishment—it's frequently people's favorite thing about gardening," he says.

When you're growing food in your own space, chances are it will be a small-scale operation so you can easily use earth-friendly techniques. "Most people can do this stuff in an organic fashion and use the techniques that people have been using for hundreds of thousands of years," he says. His two tips for doing this? Put compost on your garden instead of fertilizing, and hand-weed instead of spraying herbicides. And be sure to tell your kids why you're doing things the way you are and incorporate sustainable lessons whenever possible (here are a few to start with!).

"We always like to have a spot that is empty and has nothing in it so kids can play in the soil. It's actually one of the most popular spots. We joke around that we have all these beautiful vegetables growing, and you can ask a little 4-year-old what their favorite part was and they'll say 'getting my hands dirty and finding the worms,'" he says.

Farming with your kids comes with another unexpected benefit: It might make kids more open to new foods. "Kids are much more likely to try something if they harvested it themselves," Boyer says, joking that the kids at Edible Academy often don't even want to wait to wash their produce before they take a bite. "The more kids can actually see whole foods before they get on their plate, the more tempted they will be to try them. It's nice to see because that's the first step in getting kids to eat more foods—and healthier foods."