This Giant Cabbage Inspired A Nine-Year-Old To Feed Thousands Of People In Need
HUMANKIND
A decade on, Katie Stagliano is helping to fight hunger across the United States.
By Natasha Hinde
When nine-year-old Katie Stagliano sowed cabbage seeds in her back garden for a school project a decade ago, she never expected to grow a 40-pound vegetable.
But, like something out of ‘James And The Giant Peach’, the cruciferous kept growing and growing. (“My brother was four years old at the time and my cabbage was bigger than him,” she recalls.) The vegetable was so large that her grandfather constructed a purpose-built cage around it, to keep the local deer from eating it.
Katie distinctly remembers looking out of her window at the vegetable, which had taken three months to grow, and wondering what she was going to do with it. Her family had always been hyper-aware of food waste – she’d been taught from a young age that other families weren’t as fortunate – so Katie was determined to do something to help.
After digging up the vegetable (with help, of course), she took it to her local soup kitchen where it helped feed almost 300 people. Now, aged 20, she’s been inspired to fight against hunger, working across 30 states in America.