For most city kids, there's only one link in the food chain, and its name is Safeway or Stop & Shop. They know money doesn't grow on trees, but have no idea that food, in fact, does. A bag of pre-sliced apple wedges may be as close as most urban kids ever get to an orchard.

The natural world is just as alien to suburban children, whose native habitat has dwindled over the decades from backyards and ball fields to the narrow digital confines of MySpace. Child advocacy expert Richard Louv calls this modern malady "nature-deficit disorder." In Last Child in The Woods, Louv quotes a fourth grader who says "I like to play indoors better ‘cause that's where all the electrical outlets are."