December 20, 2010.
This past Monday I experienced something really different. The morning began with me meeting up with Joshua Riazi and some nutrition students/volunteers at Kids- Can- Cook http://www.kidscancook.org/ next to the Flower Exchange in Roxbury. There, we prepped 5 possible submission recipes for a contest that is part of Michele Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign to improve childhood health and nutrition in the US. We prepared a healthy vegetable-soba noodle stir-fry, chicken soup with butternut squash and barley, whole-grain grilled cheeses, healthy burritos and tomato-carrot-butternut squash soup. They all tasted delicious to me, but it was the kids at the Mission Hill School that we were there to please. We entered the basement cafeteria of the school (shared with a few other local schools) and I immediately saw the need for change, let alone something green, happen here. Kids with deep-fried lunches from a different school walked by as we set up, whispering and pointing and wondering why on earth we would be encroaching on their lunchroom at noon on a Monday. But soon the lunch patrons that would be trying our food entered. Many scoffed and one even had the nerve to say “I don’t need your healthy food,” but there was an undeniable glint of curiosity in each middle-school child’s eye. They came up to grab their samples, filling out a little notecard about what they thought about the dish. Many looked skeptically on the more unfamiliar, vegetabley dishes. I found myself encouraging them to try each one, saying that they had full right to hate it, and they could come back and tell me so if they thought so. Standing there for over an hour I finally understood the constant lunch-room struggle: how to get kids to try, let alone eat what doesn’t look normal to them — food that is “healthy!”
The middle-schoolers were a rough crowd, but soon some of the younger 2nd and 3rd graders filed in, and an air of excitement surrounded them at this out-of- the-ordinary occurence. Sela, my other collaborator in these recipes came to help sauté, and things suddenly seemed to be going pretty well. To my surprise, the younger kids were entirely more willing to try weird-looking stuff, and in fact embraced what looked different. There was even a small line forming to try the bright orange soup! Some of the kids from the grades that we weren’t planning on serving snuck up, asking for a taste, and we gladly doled out. I finally understood the saying about old habits dye hard. These kids were little, impressionable, and overall ready to try new things. So this is where America has to focus — healthier eating and recipes aimed at the younger kids. This is the future.
