Is this Good-Bye, Forsyth?

Over the last 8 months, I have learned an enormous amount about building food systems and community development, and the challenges that both face in eastern Montana. If I’d been placed at another FoodCorps site I might be a little busier, but I would have missed out on experiencing first-hand just how hard a time these communities have getting by, let alone finding nutritious food. I’ve watched people ignore health concerns because it’s easier than addressing them, and seen how hard it is to overcome tradition. I’ve learned to view food from a completely new perspective.

Despite the wonderful education I’m receiving, I have hit a wall. There is very little work for me to do here, and my supervisors and I have run out of ideas for filling my time. My creativity (and some of my enthusiasm, let’s face it) have waned as I try to engage this community and come up empty handed every time. My life in Forsyth revolves entirely around my work, but I no longer have enough to keep me even moderately occupied. Therefore, I have decided to try and find a new site in eastern Montana. I have taken a great deal of thought over this decision, and I have realized that continuing to spin my wheels here is not good for me. Although the thought of starting over at a new site is nerve-wracking, the possibility of finally getting my hands dirty is too tempting to pass up!

My potential sites include the Boys & Girls Club in Lame Deer, Saint Labré School in Ashland, Farm to Fork in Glendive, or the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Committee on Fort Peck. All but Glendive are located on or closely associated with a Native American Reservation and are communities significantly smaller than Forsyth. Moving to any one of these will be an enormous transition, but with only four months to go (15 weeks, 84 work days, but who’s counting?) I figure I can handle whatever Montana throws at me.

There is no guarantee that I can change sites, and with so little time left, I may have to face the fact that no site can provide me with enough work on such short notice. In that case, I will simply have to gear up for a marathon of creativity and positive thinking.

This situation has made me even more eager to get a spot with National FoodCorps in Oregon. I desperately want the position at the North Powder Charter School near Pendleton, which has a beautiful garden, a Farm to School Program and an obvious dedication to making healthy food and nutrition education a core part of their curriculum. Even though the town is only a quarter of the size of Forsyth, they have more than enough energy to offer a successful year for a FoodCorps member. And after my time living in isolation in Forsyth, I feel more than capable of handling North Powder’s size and location.

Although I have also applied for a four-month White House internship with Michelle Obama working on her Let’s Move! Initiative, I have decided that another round of FoodCorps is what I really want. By early June, I should know whether I got either one of these positions, both of which are horrendously competitive. Until then, the adventures continue in eastern Montana!

Lentil Sprouts were the Ticket!

Rosebud’s third and fourth graders watched me suspiciously as I scooped the snack of the day into Dixie cups. One said, “It looks like a tick.” I wasn’t feeling too optimistic about this lesson, since the lentil sprouts has not gone over too well in my earlier class with the kindergarteners.

Teaching at Rosebud, I’ve learned that the best way to get students excited about healthy food is to do taste-tests. The challenge is finding food that’s fun to taste. Since the school garden is still in the planning stage, I’ve been browsing the produce section at the grocery store, but I can’t bring myself to purchase dried-out radishes or the saddest-looking cabbages I’d ever seen. Fishing around for ideas in my kitchen, I decided to sprout some Montana-grown organic (Timeless) lentils. I thought eating sprouts might be fun, and it fit well into my lesson about eating different parts of plants.

Now, standing in front of the classroom, the eight third and fourth graders helped me draw a plant and label the seed, roots, stem, leaves, stalk, flower and fruit. Then we discussed how we eat different parts of plants. Who knew carrots were roots? And that broccoli is a flower? This group of students is always enthusiastic and cheerful, largely due to a like-minded teacher, and everyone was shouting out ideas, all hand-raising forgotten.

Finally I handed out the Dixie cups with a scoop of lentil sprouts in them. The students examined them carefully, and a few announced they weren’t going to eat it. “Just try one. That’s all you have to do,” I told them. Their teacher and I started talking about gardening as the students contemplated this foreign food. I heard mutters of, ‘this tastes like dirt.’ We kept talking, and then I heard one student say, “I wish I could have some more.” I hadn’t even noticed that everyone had finished eating! I asked for a thumbs up/thumbs down vote on the sprouts. I got six thumbs up and two who were unsure. Despite that, when I passed around the Tupperware of sprouts every single student refilled their cup. Now they started chatting about how good they were, and asking questions about growing your own sprouts and the different types of seeds they could do it with. One student looked at me and said, “I wish I could have some more so I could take it home to show my parents.”

“Of course you can!” Thank God I brought enough! Every single student refilled their cup to take home to their families. As I was dishing out lentils for the third time, one of the quieter third-grade boys looked at me and said, “This is awesome.”

This simple comment made all of the begging, brown-nosing and bossing I’ve gone through to get this far completely worthwhile. With barely a push from me, students were eating by the handful something they’d never even heard of before! This lesson was fun, it was educational, and presented information they’ll be able to use for the rest of their lives. The administration has sworn to me that mine is a lost cause, and that I can't force healthy food upon the students. I’m thrilled to learn that there’s no need to force anything upon them, because they are the most open-minded members of this community. I just have to remember this enthusiasm as I jump through the next set of hoops that eastern Montana sets before me.

Lip Service

Rarely does anyone say that they don’t want their kids to eat healthier. But saying healthy food is a good idea and serving it to their family are two completely different things. Lip service is easy and healthy food is hard. The ease and prevalence that processed, frozen and fast foods offer definitely provide the convenience that a healthy meal appears to lack for a busy family. Teaching children to eat nutritious food requires education, enthusiasm, and a willingness on the part of a parent to persist even when their effort to serve beet salad bombs.

But providing a healthy diet is one of the most important things a parent can do to ensure that their child lives a healthy lifestyle. A parent who doesn’t take action to help their obese child with their health is just as negligent as the parent of a child who is underweight and starving. Being obese puts a strain on young bodies which they were not made to handle, which puts them at risk for diabetes, low self-esteem, and a lower quality of life.

Although my work to promote healthy eating starts in the school, ultimately parents need to make a commitment to shop, cook and eat quality food. Unless their child regularly does the grocery shopping and has extra money to spend, choices about food comes from adults. Unfortunately, I am learning that it is much harder to provide adults with the education they need to teach their children about food because they already have so many firmly-set ideas about eating. Much of the American population has misconceptions about health and weight management which include crash diet plans, magic weight loss supplements and media worship of appallingly skinny celebrities.

Eastern Montana isn’t likely to be easily convinced by a blonde, out-of-state agent of the federal government. The lip service that I’ve encountered in this community is more frustrating than outright rejection of the ideas I am proposing. It leaves me unsure of how to deal with people because I can’t tell who is genuinely interested and who is waiting for me to leave so they can pull their bag of potato chips out from under the table. During my time here, I’ve done my best to be as nonjudgmental as possible when it comes to food, in the hopes that they are comfortable being honest with me about their ideas on food and health. Despite my best efforts, I’ve run into a great deal of lip service. Loudly proclaiming the benefits of healthy food is so much easier than actually designing a meal that children will eat which includes lima beans.

My hope is that my students will take the ideas we discuss about healthy food home to share with their families. The enthusiasm I’ve encountered from the classes I’m working with shows me they’re valuable allies on this mission. I challenged my fifth graders to eat a meal that includes five different colors, and one student said he’d help his mom cook dinner that night and pick out the colors. A kindergartener who had never eaten a radish before said he would ask for them at home. I can only hope that the surprise this may evoke from their families will lead to deeper consideration about the benefits serving healthy food can have.