Of course, it is created some barriers where we come up with solutions to where we can deliver some of these things to the home so that everyone still has equal access. For those who can access local food that has the privilege of a schedule and transportation to get to local farmers markets, it has been a nice push to get them to local farmers markets to try it out, to meet farmers to get a certain apple so that they can come together with me to do this lesson plan.
But, in a lot of ways, this has created equity gaps or has continued to perpetuate these equity gaps. And I think that's something extremely important for farm to school work to be thinking about. For all these opportunities that we offer, we need to have the materials available to address the gaps as well.
Since the pandemic began and schools closed, many parents and caregivers are finding themselves taking a more active role in the day to day education. Could you give our readers tips on how to best engage kids with lessons around healthy eating?
Parents and caregivers are absolutely the experts on their kids and feeding their kids. And they do it all day every day. It can be tricky and challenging because kids of all ages, including the senior citizens that I work with, can find trying new foods to be scary.
I think one of the starting places would be to always remember that it can take kids many opportunities to try something. And to not just try it through eating, but to experience something in different ways before they are ready to do something like stick it in their mouth.
This could be reading a book about turnips and growing turnips and painting turnips because they're such a cool color. Then also looking at turnips and sorting all of the turnips and dividing all the turnips between all the different family members, make sure everyone gets an equal amount. Then building this up. So by the time we eat it, you're going to love these things!
This includes opportunities for the whole family to be involved. For example, scrubbing vegetables with brushes is a great task for even our smallest kids.
I would also encourage caregivers to invite kids to try lots of different varieties of turnips. I think even as adults what we do oftentimes is we say, "Oh I tried apples once and I did not like them." But their biodiversity offers us so many different varieties with so many different tastes and texture profiles that it's nice to be able to introduce right off the bat, here are lots of different varieties of radishes. Which one do you like more or less?
Then when you're trying those different varieties, and I should say preparation styles too. That could be raw turnips, roasting turnips, sautéing turnips. But it could even be just the way you cut the turnips. It could be the way that you do carrots in coins or that you grate carrots or that you do them in match sticks because that texture makes a difference, it can make a difference to a kid.
All of those variations will get kids closer to feeling like they have some choice on which one they want to try first, next, and last. It'll also help develop this sort of sense that it's not a dichotomy between, yes I like it or no I don't. It's more an idea of which one do you like more? Would you like it prepared differently? Would you like to try a different variety? And it's also a way to give kids some language to describe food. I think that's a lot of what we miss about food is we just eat it to be hungry in the car on the way to soccer practice; we don't talk about it.
But if we can have those conversations—let's say we're tasting a radish—and if we have that conversation of “what do you like about it?” “Oh, it's crunchy…” “I like crunchy things too!” It's crunchy like a carrot. That is a really fun part of this radish. Questions like: What else do you taste in it? Oh is it too spicy for you? Is this one less spicy? Is this one sweeter? With these, you can kind of hone in on what exactly what you like or dislike. Is it the spiciness that isn't your favorite, or is this one not crunchy enough? Maybe this apple is too mealy. It just helps create a lot more of this gradient between I don't like it, I do like it. There are all of these things in between. All these different preparation styles, all these different textures, and the way that you talk about this vegetable. And there are all these different ways to describe the taste and the texture in these gradients. "It's not my favorite, but I would try it again," to "That is my favorite, I love it."
Can you give us an example of an exercise you use with your students?
We like to do a mindfulness exercise from the book “Before We Eat” by Pat Brisson.
In our classes, we do three different contemplations before we eat. The first contemplation is that this food is a gift of the earth, sky, sun, and rain. Amazingly, it started as a small seed, and then this soil and the sun and the water and the air all came together to create this carrot? That is cool. And when you can get kids just amazed at that miracle, that's already pretty incredible.
