Columbus Dispatch Article October 8 2009

Tater tutors

Back-to-basics nutrition program teaches children to make better choices

Spying kale half-eaten by aphids and caterpillars in the garden at his preschool, 3-year-old

Ryland Turner had but one thought: It must be pretty scrumptious.

Ryland and his peers at the Early Childhood Learning Community were pulling garden duty, stripping leaves that insects had reduced to leftovers.

"Farmer Paul" Etheridge, who teaches an ecology-education program sponsored by the budding nonprofit organization Local Matters, explained that aphids are like "little vampires," piercing leaves and sucking out juices.

That was recommendation enough for Ryland, who began to munch the kale, too.

Etheridge and the teaching staff deftly redirected Ryland to the garden's "compost mountain," where the kale was tossed, thereby sparing an entire aphid community on the underside of the leaf. Clearly, Etheridge said, these children have no hang-ups about eating their veggies.

Yet many other children do.

According to the Ohio Department of Health, 38 percent of Franklin County third-graders are overweight, as are almost half of the third-graders in the inner core of Columbus. These children face greater risks of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular, lung and fatty-liver diseases.

For the first time in recorded history, the life span of a generation of children -- those born after 2000 -- is expected to be less than that of their parents, according to a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"The problems are now dramatic enough that we can't work in a scattershot manner anymore," said Susan Weber, director of operations for Local Matters, which promotes locally grown food and works with area schools to teach children to rethink what they eat.

"We really do have to take a very comprehensive, invested, committed approach if we want these statistics to turn."

As part of a pilot project, Local Matters in January introduced its nutrition-education program (called Food Is Elementary) to kindergartners in three Columbus elementary schools (Ohio Avenue, Indianola and Clinton) and one Worthington school (Brookside). The program -- funded by private donations, grants and some of the schools where it teaches -- is back this school year in all but Ohio Avenue, where district officials declined to continue it.

The group also teaches the curriculum to preschoolers at eight Head Start centers in the county and consults with the Franklin County Board of Developmental Disabilities to teach food ecology at two early-childhood centers.

"All told, we teach 30 classes and probably reach about 700 children on a weekly basis with this program," Executive Director Michael Jones said. "All of the obesity-prevention statistics back it up: The earlier you can start with children these days, the better. . . . Already (we) are seeing pretty amazing results."

The approach is two-pronged: Teach nutrition in the classroom and, in schools where garden space is available, show kids how to grow their own food.

First-graders at Brookside recently compared the fat in potatoes with the fat in a bag of potato chips. Then pupils decided where the foods belong on the food pyramid: Potatoes are vegetables, but chips are fats and oils.

Rachael Smith, lead food educator for Local Matters, pointed out that the chips have a food label, but the potatoes don't. Why?

"Because potatoes come out of the ground!" someone shouted.

Later, instructors turned down the lights and pupils closed their eyes. Locally grown red and yellow apples were plopped into the waiting hands as Smith soothingly led them through a gastronomic exercise.

"You're going to use your senses -- your sense of smell, your sense of touch, maybe even your sense of hearing," Smith said. "Take a bite, with your eyes closed. Chew it really slowly."

The fruit, she pointed out, was picked from a tree not far from the school. Students savored and munched, many of them eating until only bits of the core remained.

"They taste the bomb!" 6-year-old Kanen Helpman exclaimed.

The lesson is part of a 28-week curriculum that focuses on whole, unprocessed foods such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes and seeds. (Dairy, meat and nuts are avoided.)

After learning nutrition basics this semester, pupils will chop onions, squeeze lemons and make black-bean dip and vegetable sushi. They'll have weekly geography lessons, learning the cultural traditions surrounding dishes such as Indian dal and African soul stew.

"It's really important to us that it's sensory-based," Smith said. "They learn what a healthy food is, where it comes from, but also what to do with a healthy food.

"A big part of it is just getting them to identify foods. Because kids aren't cooking, they're not seeing their parents cook as much, and they're just not familiar with whole foods. So many are just eating on the run. . . . So we're just slowing it down, and teaching the kids to enjoy foods and really taste them."

Back in the garden at the Early Childhood Learning Community, Farmer Paul knelt in front of a low table, cutting carrots before a rapt audience of youngsters.

"When we're eating carrots, we're all eating a root," he exclaimed.

"Yummy!" several kids responded as he parceled out the veggies.

Etheridge encouraged them to "take a minute, relax and crunch" as he began slicing radishes -- another root vegetable that's a much harder sell to a preschool crowd.

As several others chomped those, 4-year-old Jett Allen fanned his tongue, trying to lessen the radish's pungency.

"Hhhhhh!" he said.

"What Local Matters tries to do is get people chewing food -- something that's yummy and came from this place," Etheridge said later. "That's really the focal point of these gardens, connecting not only to your food but to place."

After a short lesson about plant parts and soil types, children stirred compost, looked for worms or harvested what's ripe in the garden. Pint-size gardeners can be overeager, Etheridge said, and sometimes look like chipmunks whose mouths are stuffed with green cherry tomatoes.

"That's a positive because they're experiencing something," he said. "It's all experiential-based. It's about touching, smelling, tasting, listening to the birds and bees, and exploring everything that's out here."

The bonus is that children develop more adventurous palates and healthier attitudes about healthful food.

"They're more willing to try things they know grew here than they would (food) coming out of the kitchen," said Cindy Moore, a special-education teacher at the Northwest Side preschool.

"To learn that connection, where the food comes from -- (that) it doesn't just come from Kroger or Meijer -- they so enjoy it."