I discovered a really neat website a couple of years ago as I was researching vegetable consumption trends for a presentation I was giving to a horticultural society at the time– it is called http://www.lovemysalad.com You can imagine my excitement to happen upon a site that celebrates and shares the good news of eating salads, being part of a family whose business is growing tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce – indeed the backbone of many a well constructed salad. This site was initiated several years ago by some employees from a family- owned Dutch vegetable breeding company – Rijk Zwaan. This company may mean nothing to most, but it is a company that greenhouse growers recognize for developing and marketing varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers , lettuces and more for greenhouse and field production. I love this sustainable business approach! Get people excited and talking about fruits and vegetables and build demand for your product- and therefore sell more seed! Love My Salad is truly “the Social Salad Network” ( as their website espouses) for passionate salad lovers from around the world to learn about fruits and vegetables and share recipes for great salads .
More recently in this country, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association has begun a marketing campaign “Half your Plate”, which stresses the importance of filling half your plate with fruits and vegetables at every meal, to ensure that you are getting your daily requirement of 7-10 servings according to Canada’s Food Guide. We all know the positive health benefits of increased fruits and veggie consumption, yet sometimes we need some inspiration on how to incorporate more into our diets. I encourage you to check out the “LoveMySalad” Facebook page with its almost 250,000 international followers and have fun interacting with salad lovers from every corner of the world and garnering a treasure trove of salad recipes. The various languages of comments posted on this page are just as fascinating as the recipes featured – truly the United Nations of Healthy Eating.
