By Caroline Croland
Are you ready to Turnip the Volume with Chef Asata?
As October Farm to School Month has drawn to a close, Georgia Organics would like to take some time to celebrate Chef Asata Reid.
Chef Asata Reid (Photo courtesy of Chef Asata Reid).
An invaluable Farm to Early Care Chef Educator here at Georgia Organics, Chef Asata is a Farm to School all-star. She has almost two decades of experience as a professional chef and community health educator. With an honors graduate of the International Culinary School at the Art Institute of Atlanta, a cum laude graduate of Florida A&M University’s School of Journalism, an honors recipient with a Masters in Education from the University of Kansas, and a Master of Public Health from Emory University, Reid brings a wealth of knowledge to Georgia Organics’ Farm to School program.
In addition to her extensive educational background, Reid is also the CEO of Life Chef LCC, creates educational videos for DECAL and Quality Care for Children, creates taste tests for Small Bites Adventure Club, and is releasing her first book, “How to Feed a Kid” before the end of the year.
“Chef Asata is brilliant, creative, pragmatic, funny, and relatable, all at once. With an extensive educational background in the culinary arts, education, and public health, as well as practical, first-hand experience as a mother, Chef Asata brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the farm to school table,” says Kimberly Koogler, Farm to School Coordinator at Georgia Organics. “In training and workshops she delivers, she makes real connections with the audience and provides practical guidance based on a tried and true experience, often in a way that also makes you smile and laugh.”
Chef Asata recently created six recipe videos for Georgia Organics’ “Turnip the Volume: Can you dig it?” Farm to School month campaign.
Whether it’s learning about fractions and photosynthesis while making Turnip Carrot Slaw, or states of matter while creating a delicious turnip stew, Chef Asata’s recipes turn delicious cooking into a memorable, hands-on learning experience.
We sat down with Chef Asata to talk with her about her work and her passion for Farm to School education.
Tell us a little bit about your background and experience as a chef and an educator.
I’ve been a professional chef for almost two decades. After I started my business Life Chef, I realized how much I love helping people learn to improve their lives, so I have expanded my practice beyond teaching cooking and nutrition into other areas of health and wellness. As a community health educator, it is important to me that anyone who attends my classes or seminars walks away with actionable items to immediately apply to their lives. No matter how old or young, we can all learn something to help us achieve our health and wellness goals. Even better if we can do it by eating delicious food in the process!
Photo courtesy of Chef Asata Reid.
What inspires you about your work?
I think the “a-ha!” moment when someone grasps a concept or technique and now owns it for themselves is really what keeps me going. I want people to feel empowered in their lives, in their bodies, in their kitchens, in their decisions. When someone gains knowledge, they can wield that knowledge to benefit themselves. I think that is at the core of teaching. So when a parent feels like they can get a balanced meal on the table for dinner, or a college kid feels like they can eat healthy on a budget, or a senior citizen can stretch their food dollars further, or a child tries a new vegetable and likes it… all of those scenarios include a person gaining knowledge and applying it to their life. So basically, when you learn and grow, that inspires me.
Tell us about some of your favorite experiences that you have had collaborating with Georgia Organics and our Farm to School Program.
Over the years, some of my most rewarding work has been with Georgia Organics and the Farm to School and Farm to ECE programs, because these initiatives aren’t just about putting fresh produce in front of kids. These initiatives are about building communities, and food is the medium through which communities are fostered. The Farm to School/Early childhood education programs builds bridges between farmers and schools/ECEs and that’s a great thing, especially if local foods are served in meals and local dollars stay in the community. But it’s so much more than that. We work to empower the nutrition staff to embrace local and fresh produce and train them in recipe development and in thinking of themselves as educators as well. With that mindset, we can also build bridges between the kitchen/cafeteria and the classroom. In the classroom, we can bridge Farm to School/ECE goals with the curriculum so that children can learn about food from many different angles. Not just nutrition and health, but culture, community, commerce, and their learning objectives from science, math, literacy, and more. Farm to School/ECE can strengthen the bridges between the classroom and home for students and parents. Through Farm to School/ECE, food serves as a powerful conduit of information, connection, learning, and sharing and I’m proud of the work we have been able to do and am humbled by the many lives we have touched.
Photo courtesy of Chef Asata Reid.
Why do you choose to work with Farm to School and Farm to Early Care initiatives?
I fully believe that if children grow up connected to their food, the people who grow it, harvest it, distribute it, and cook it, they will have a more holistic understanding of food, and not tend to separate food from nutrition, and food from agriculture. To me all three of those topics are intertwined and to understand one, you have to have an understanding of the other three. Research has shown us that children who learn what I call “food literacy” in these early years of life have better success at being healthy eaters and having a healthy attitude about food. Just as math and language literacy starts in the early years, so does this “food literacy.” If we want to turn the tide of some of the health crises that are so glaring in America, we have to start with our children and we have to include our communities. The problems of food insecurity, food apartheid, affordable health access and equality, community equity, and sovereignty are complex and multi-tiered. But one thing we can all agree upon is that people have to eat, and equal and fair access to food should be a basic human right. Working with Farm to School/ECE initiatives allows more than just interaction with kids (which I love!) but also provides an opportunity to impact the food policies and purchasing power of schools and ECEs, which has a financial impact on local businesses and farms, a health impact on the students and staff, and ultimately takes steps to build a future where kids and their food may be separated by just a few miles. Farm to School/ECE work gives us all an opportunity to reprioritize food as activism. Some of what we do is so simple, but everything we do is a building block, and with intention and over time, each school or early education site can be a house of opportunity for grassroots food activism. In that way, I believe we can reclaim food as a human right and change the world.
One simple thing that an early care provider or parent can do to make eating veggies exciting for their children?
Photo courtesy of Chef Asata Reid.
To be honest, eating veggies doesn’t have to be “exciting,” it just needs to be normalized. I don’t know that dinner needs to be a sideshow every day, it just needs to be eaten. And sometimes I think adults have expectations that are too high when it comes to what and how kids eat. If eating vegetables is normalized, if it’s “just what we do,” then it isn’t something that has to be overemphasized and kids don’t need so much coaxing. I always say a parent’s job is to provide healthy meals at regular mealtimes. That’s super simple, but that’s it. If there were one other thing I’d add to that, it would be: make sure the food tastes good. I know that seems obvious, but in so many settings, both at school and at home, adults are more focused on checking nutrition boxes. “Was a vegetable served? Yes. Was it green? Yes? Was it eaten? No.” You know why? Because it was overcooked, mushy, and gross. Before “Was it served?” somebody should’ve asked, “Does it taste good?” Kids have spectacular, vibrant, sensitive palates which means they love appealing flavors and textures and are very put off by unappealing flavors and textures. I think adults would have more success if they prepared veggies in ways that enhance their natural deliciousness and normalized eating veggies by modeling that behavior themselves. Parents should also recognize that they are in it for the long-game and that growing and nurturing a “healthy eater” can take all of the 18 years we have with our kids.
What projects are you working on right now?
We are in the throes of Farm to School Month so we just released the Georgia Organics Turnip the Volume Videos. I will be doing some training videos for family home care providers under Georgia Quality Care for Children, and some training videos for Bright from the Start DECAL. I am very excited to launch my book “How to Feed a Kid” before the year is over. It is a guide to help parents navigate some of the major pitfalls we encounter in feeding our kids well over the years. It is a quick, light-hearted read packed with my years of experience of feeding kids of all ages. And as always, I have projects in the works with my partners at Georgia Organics, Small Bites Adventure Club, the National Farm to School Network, and more to continue working on the behalf of kids, families, schools, and communities to have access to food education and food empowerment.