Arlington, Va. (11/23/10) -- Students at Arlington’s Barcroft Elementary School were treated last week to perhaps the most persuasive of arguments for healthy and local food: tastings! The Barcroft PTA’s Wellness Committee, a group of parents, teachers and staff members “dedicated to helping our children learn how to make healthy choices,” put on an impressive spread for its Farm-to-Table Week. With special guests and new dishes to try each day, the cafeteria was turned into a veritable cultural fair for future foodies.
Author Nancy Piho and a parent volunteer give Barcroft Elementary School students tastes of milk and stickers that say "No Farms, No Food."
All of the week’s featured items won rave reviews from kids and teachers alike. “The kids have been clamoring for thirds and fourths!” enthused PTA president Susan Dubois, adding that the group has decided to put together a cookbook for Barcoft families.
The week of tastings began with sweet potatoes and apples, followed on Tuesday with bowtie pasta garnished in pesto and broccoli prepared by Cindy Olson, graphic artist and Freshfarm Market Master. Children got to touch and explore a bevy of ingredients Olson brought from the market. On Wednesday, former Tabard Inn chef Lynn Foster made bean, cheese and veggie quesadillas with fresh ingredients from Bethesda Central Farm Market. Foster is a caterer who also sells Cowgirl Creamery cheese at farmer’s markets, including the new Friday market at the District’s Horace Mann Elementary School.
After enjoying homemade applesauce on Thursday, on Friday, Barcroft students talked about natural and flavored dairy products with veteran food industry professional Nancy Tringali Piho, author of My Two-Year-Old Eats Octopus: Raising Children to Love to Eat Everything. Piho engaged students at their seats and with a special taste-test table to get them thinking about the sugar and colorings in the “kid” versions of foods, an industry Piho says is unnecessary. If we really want children to make healthy choices, she explained, we need to give them real food, not substitutes that are high on additives and low on nutrition.
The school’s efforts were funded by the National PTA Healthy Lifestyles Award, of which Barcroft was identified as a “stand-out” recipient among the cohort of 22 schools that won the $1000 grant (out of a pool of over 400 applicants nationwide). The Wellness Committee’s goal was to expose children to a wide variety of foods and also to teach their parents that these healthy choices are viable options. They chose easy, inexpensive meals to prepare and handed out the recipes on Friday in both English and Spanish, like all other communication that goes home from the Title I school. Also given to children were copies of Chop, Chop magazine.
A sign in the hallway encourages Barcroft students to take advantage of the special week of tastings.
“We want kids to be engaged in the idea of eating healthy,” Dubois said. Last week’s events were so successful that the group is looking to repeat the tastings once a month. Parents are also considering other ways to be healthy, including taking chocolate milk out of the cafeteria, a decision that would need to be addressed at the county level. Barcroft is a year-round school, and when other schools were on vacation in August, no one complained about the lack of chocolate milk in the Barcroft cafeteria, Dubois said. The lack of outcry bolsters Piho’s position that kids don’t need special – that is, sugary and flavored – foods.
Barcroft PTA President Susan Dubois gives out "No Farms, No Food" stickers and samples of fresh milk compared to sugary flavored milks.
In addition to the buzz in the Barcroft cafeteria last week, the school also welcomed the Virginia Cooperative Extension, which gave classes on healthy living to students at all grade levels. The week concluded with Barcroft’s monthly Family Fitness Night, featuring Flamenco dance lessons for families and a presentation by a representative from the National PTA and APS Superintendent Patrick K. Murphy.
Barcroft was also one of the recipients of funding from Silver Diner, a local restaurant chain whose “Eat Well, Do Well” program donates money to schools “to improve nutrition and fitness programs.” Restaurant-goers enrolled in the program can identify schools to receive a portion of the funds. At a September ceremony in Virginia Beach, Silver Diner Co-Founder and CEO Bob Giaimo presented Virginia’s First Lady Maureen McDonnell with a giant check for $17, 625 symbolizing the money the program had already raised for dozens of schools across Virginia
Virginia First Lady Maureen McDonnell presents a giant check for $17, 625 symbolizing the money raised for dozens of schools across Virginia by Silver Diner's Eat Well, Do Well program. Photo courtesy of Silver Diner
In Alexandria City, George Mason Elementary School also incorporated tastings into its week’s celebration of Virginia Farm-to-School Week, which was designated in 2009 by the Virginia General Assembly as the second week in November. In addition to apple tastings and a chef’s tasting with a chef from Old Town Alexandria’s Restaurant Eve, the school also held its first “restaurant night” at Food Matters, a restaurant in Cameron Station that offers local foods and runs a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Food Matters donated ten percent of the evening’s proceeds to the school. George Mason parent and the school’s Farm to School Committee founder Katherine Sumner is working to bring Food Matters co-owner Christy Przystawik into the older grades’ science classes to talk about what CSAs are and how they work.
A highlight of the successful week for Sumner was “watching the 2nd graders at George Mason Elementary devour raw local greens, Virginia apples, and local blue cheese and then continue to ask for more.” Echoing Dubois’s enthusiasm about the community response to Barcroft’s initiatives, Sumner concluded that the positive feedback from George Mason’s Farm to School Week “confirmed my belief that when we give children the opportunity to grow, harvest, prepare, and eat locally grown wholesome food, they respond. This is the best way to teach our children about nourishing themselves and the world around them.”
Related link: Author Nancy Piho's blog post on her visit to Barcroft Elementary and on children's foods and Thanksgiving.
Jessica Claire Haney is a freelance writer, editor and tutor. Her writing has appeared in parenting publications and poetry journals. A former high school English teacher, Jessica is mother to a four-year-old son and a new baby girl. She is passionate about holistic health and well-being and is a leader of a chapter of Holistic Moms Network.
Jessica's blog is Crunchy-Chewy Mama, crunchychewymama.com, and her writer's site is jessicaclairehaney.com.
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