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Image Credit: Maven Mama"According to Japanese legend, a young man named Sen no Rikyu sought to learn the elaborate set of customs known as the Way of Tea. He went to tea-master Takeeno Joo, who tested the younger man by asking him to tend the garden. Rikyu cleaned up debris and raked the ground until it was perfect, then scrutinized the immaculate garden. Before presenting his work to the master, he shook a cherry tree, causing a few flowers to spill randomly onto the ground.

On the heels of last week's post, Fast Food Makes You Stupid, I want to celebrate a few schools who are taking the opposite approach. Last weekend's Christian Science Monitor article "The School Lunchroom Grows Green" describes several public schools, private schools, and universities around the country that are incorporating community gardens and other eco-and-local food friendly concepts into their cafeterias.

Great recent post by Jill Richardson in La Vida Locavore entitled Fast Food Makes You Stupid (Yet We Serve It In Our Schools). Here's an excerpt:

[A recent study found that] children scored between 58 and 181 points in the reading tests, gaining an average score of 141.5. But after taking other factors into account, pupils who ate fast food between four and six times a week scored almost seven points below average. Children snacking once a day fell 16 points, while pupils indulging three times a day dropped by 19 points. Similar trends were noted in maths. In total, children scored between 47 and 151 points in the test, with average results of 115. But those pupils eating fast food dropped by between 6.5 and 18.5 points.