School-based farm gives food for thought
Each week since June, the Dafney Tales pieces notes, a local chef has helped students cook healthy lunches made mostly with the produce they grow. At 3 p.m., they sell the produce from a stand outside the school. In this way the teenagers are not just learning the rudiments of a business but about how to feed themselves and make nutritious choices as they grow into adulthood.
Today's Daily News features another story about urban farming, but this one has something of a twist: It's schoolkids who are doing the farming, as part of Seeds for Learning, a program "teaching farming and entrepreneurship" that is based at Martin Luther King High School in West Oak Lane.
What makes this twist noteworthy is that the growing of food is not just a "green" initiative but a learning expericence in healthy eating.
Each week since June, the Dafney Tales pieces notes, a local chef has helped students cook healthy lunches made mostly with the produce they grow. At 3 p.m., they sell the produce from a stand outside the school. In this way the teenagers are not just learning the rudiments of a business but about how to feed themselves and make nutritious choices as they grow into adulthood.
This puts me in mind of a column I wrote for our food section back in the day, in which I tried to answer the musical question "How do we get kids to eat healthy at lunch?"
In looking into the history of our nation's School Lunch Program, I found that Philly (and in particular, William Penn High School ) was essentially the birthplace of the self-sufficient school lunch program. You can read about that fun fact in this link, but what I was specifically reminded of today was the "Food is Elementary" curriculum mentioned. Based on actual foods available through the USDA commodities program, it has continued and expanded since 2001, teaching children about food, but also other topics with food as the medium. (Here's a PDF of a 2006 article, "Schoolwork Never Tasted So Good!" on the curriculum.)
In this system created by Dr. Antonia Demas, "youngsters handle, measure, cook and eat real food from the USDA. ... And Demas found when these lower-fat foods are on lunch menus, students in her classes choose them 20 times as often as other kids."
Where feasible Demas recommends a garden to grow supplementary food, which dovetails nicely with what's going on at MLK High. Making a connection to the land, learning about food and its origins, and eating healthy food instead of junk food at lunchtime? Sounds like a winner to me.