Show Me the Movement! by Megan Hanson

Our epidemic rates of obesity and related illnesses across this nation should be telling us - without a single doubt.  We need a new kind of nutrition education.

We need to UN-learn much of what has been forced down the rusty nutrition education pipeline by profit-focused food companies and the government organizations who get in bed with them.  If we expect kids to fight the current odds for one in three of them developing diabetes, we can't just hang the food pyramid and DRONE on about healthy food.

Instead, We can grow healthy food.  We can learn to cook this food so that it tastes great.  And, we can remind our youth that healthy food can absolutely be a part of their hip youth cultures. THIS is how we get kids to eat their veggies - for real.

RootDown LA is proud to be working among other organizations in South LA, such as the Social Justice Learning Institute, who recognize the power and myriad, health, environmental and community benefits of growing our own healthy food. RootDown LA has identified a need to focus on the COOKING and TASTING of these healthy foods - whenever and wherever possible.

We COOK and TASTE these foods so that we build preferences and DEMAND for this healthy food in South LA.  We build demand so that stores like Trader Joes can no longer say, "there's no market for us in South LA."  We build demand, so that we can respond loudly to our president, who believes in school lunch reform, yet has let it be known he needs more support from communities outside of Berkeley, California. 

He has challenged us,  "Show me the movement."

This isn't about creating something new. This is something old.  This is about revitalizing a deeply entrenched appreciation and respect for food, for gathering around the table, that already exists in the communities where we work.

In the past 6 years, we've asked hundreds of high school students who live in areas where fast and processed foods SEEM to have become the youth foods of choice,

"What's your favorite food memory?"   

Not once.

Never…

has a kid written about a chip, cereal or soda.  They write instead about "my granny's posole", "my pop's special shrimp" or "the sweet potato pie my auntie makes for Thanksgiving."  When we ask - SO why are you telling us you are eating chips and soda every day when your favorite foods are these homemade foods?  They explain, "because it's easy, because it's cheap, because we're used to how these foods taste."

Oh yeah? 

And here is where the UN-learning begins. 

With our chef's knives, portable burners, and spices, RootDown LA goes about cooking with kids and busting the myth that healthy food tastes bad, takes too long to prepare, or is too expensive.  We cook healthy meals in minutes, at costs cheaper than school lunch or a combo meal at Carl's Junior.  And the kids devour the food.

And new last year, we have started to develop and deliver with partner organizations such like the Social Justice Institute, trainings that prepare our youth to focus on the SUPPLY of healthy food to meet a growing demand.  We are growing food, plentiful enough to share back into our communities.  It’s a full circle cycle for food systems change and it’s changing the way our youth think about and seek out healthy food. 

Megan E. Hanson
Renegade Nutrition Educator; ED, RootDown LA