Human Health and the Organic Garden

As society advances, people have become increasingly detached from their food sources. The way modern humans live and eat is incredibly different than the way ancestral populations have dealt with food. This has led to an increased prevalence of human health diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. This program strives to explore material from the Integrative Biology department at UC Berkeley to better understand the benefits plant based nutrition and medicine have on human health.

The goal of the program is to integrate UC Berkeley students into the pre-school and K-12 Berekely public school system, enabling an exchange of information from both sides where they can engage with plants and think about where their food comes from. The hope is  to inspire and cause students to consider why their bodies evolved to digest certain kinds of food but not others, and what consequences this has on health/physiology. By introducing the community to sustainable food sources and through analysis of the nutritional as well as medicinal aspects of plants, we hope to promote healthy lifestyles.