FoodCorps is proud to be supported nationally by the Walmart Foundation as together we seek to reach children with high quality, impactful nutrition education that sets kids up for healthy futures.

Moencopi Day School in Tuba City, Arizona, is in its second year collaborating with FoodCorps through community partner Moenkopi Developers Corporation. Thanks to the amazing work of service members Elysse Honyouti and Lauren Burke last year, and current service member Curt Cebula, students at Moencopi Day School are making deep connections to their food, culture, and community through hands-on learning with healthy food.

Moencopi Day School in Tuba City, Arizona, has offered a garden learning program for over 10 years. But it was just last spring that student-grown produce first appeared on this elementary school’s cafeteria lunch line—a Hopi Nation first.

That special lunch was important for Moencopi Day School. For the fifth graders who made it happen, the impact came over months of learning and preparation. Guided by Steven Lomadafkie, a science and environmental educator at the school, and two AmeriCorps service members recruited and trained by FoodCorps, an organization connecting kids to healthier foods and the natural world, the students planted and tended lettuce, gaining skills and pride in the resulting harvest.

Through washing the greens and planning a school-wide party, the students built a connection with cafeteria staff—who saw the infectious enthusiasm kids could have for a vegetable. By modeling positive eating behaviors, these fifth graders became healthy food champions, spreading the joy of good nutrition to their peers. It’s the sum of these ongoing, school-wide experiences that shapes children’s eating habits and their lifelong benefits.

A belief in hands-on learning is something that Moencopi Day School is embracing in its second year of partnership with FoodCorps and local nonprofit Moenkopi Developers Corporation. This year’s FoodCorps service member, Curt Cebula, is building on last year’s progress, expanding greenhouse lessons to all grades and increasing the frequency of taste tests. “The kids love him,” Steven says of Curt. “Sometimes he’ll get 10 hugs before a class starts.

Keep reading on Walmart.com

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When you’re at your wits’ end trying to get a kid to taste a new vegetable, you resort to the Trojan Horse method: hiding the offending food in other dishes. The logic goes as such: you love Little One, Little One hates healthy food, but you’ll be darned if Little One isn’t eating healthy, whether they know it or not. Thanks to generational wisdom (and Pinterest), we all know a million different ways to hide a whole range of veggies from picky eaters. My mom was no stranger to pureeing eggplant into my lasagna. I, too, once took secret joy in sneaking beans into meals cooked for a legume-hating but fiber-poor ex boyfriend. From butternut squash stirred into mac and cheese to meatballs packed with tiny mushroom chunks, invisible veggies just go down easier with those who can’t even look at a cauliflower floret without gagging. This includes many of my students, who won’t hesitate to proclaim that the turnip greens I’ve just harvested and lovingly prepared for them look “absolutely disgusting. YEEUUCHHH”

Part of my job as a FoodCorps service member is to encourage these pint-sized naysayers to try healthy foods in a fun and controlled environment so that they’ll actually eat the vegetables on their school lunch tray instead of throwing them away. I do this by conducting taste tests of locally-sourced produce on a monthly basis with my co-service member, Kelly. My goal when selecting a taste test recipe is to ensure the veggie appears prominently in the dish, so the kids can recognize it and eat it when it resurfaces in future meals. This is especially important when the vegetable is brand new to them; whereas nearly every kid knows what carrots look like before they’re mashed up into a souffle, fewer have encountered an intact beet or radish. Admittedly, it’s hard to reconcile this vision with veggies so brazenly healthy that they scare kids away on sight. Is it a coincidence that the veggies with the worst reputations for flavor tend to be dark green? Broccoli, collards, and green beans each incited horror among my sisters and I at our childhood family dinners. Those scary green mounds were the visual embodiments of sheer, unadulterated nutrition! There was no way stuff that looked like that would taste good!

So, with kale on the docket for November’s Harvest of the Month taste test, Kelly and I considered our options: mask the leafy green threat in fruity smoothies? Blend up some kale hummus? Try kale pesto pasta? Each of these recipes would render the original kale leaves unidentifiable, but we guessed that with its big, fluffy leaves and deep green hue, it’d be a tough sell if left raw.

But kids can surprise us. Before the monthly sampling kicked off, I had tested a kale salad recipe with some of my Stefanik Elementary students. Each kid picked their own leaf from the beautiful purple kale plants growing in the school garden. They watched, some eagerly, some with heavy skepticism, as I tossed the leaves in orange juice vinaigrette and passed them out like leafy popsicles. Overwhelmingly, the students told me they loved it and picked their stems clean. Armed with those positive preliminary reviews, Kelly and I decided to buck kid-friendly kitchen logic and serve raw kale salad to everyone.

​This salad had no frills beyond its sweet and tangy dressing–no croutons to distract from all those frighteningly fresh greens, nor Craisins to incentivize both chewing and swallowing. Right before our kickoff taste test at Bowe Elementary, I got cold feet, panicking that the Stefanik kids were only jazzed about eating raw kale because they’d picked it themselves. To my shock and delight, a majority of the Bowe students who tried the salad voted that they’d either liked it or loved it! We went on to tally a 69% positive response on average at Lambert-Lavoie, Stefanik, and Litwin during subsequent taste tests. I loved the kale taste test because it proved that, while having your kid help prepare their own healthy food (picking kale, dressing a salad, stirring a pot, whatever) is a sure-fire way to get them to taste it, kids won’t always balk at a food based on looks alone. It helps that Kelly and I bring lots of energy to these events and reward brave tasters with stickers. But at the end of the day, kids will face their ultimate food foes on their own and decide they aren’t so disgusting after all. Now hopefully, when they see kale again in their school lunch, they won’t be afraid to dig in.​

The post How to Get Kids to Eat Kale (Without Hiding It Under the Potatoes) appeared first on FoodCorps.

Our first taste-test in Brunswick County was in November, and we served sweet potato stew – a hearty mix of sweet potatoes, collard greens, and black beans. The result was overwhelmingly positive. Below is the final tally from one of the four schools that got to taste the stew, and the recipe was similarly received at the other three.

I learned a lot from this first taste-test. First off, kids will try almost anything for a sticker, but even without stickers, most kids are much more curious and adventurous with new foods than we give them credit for. They do have some very interesting initial reactions, though. While every student had their own unique response, the following six were by far the most common.

1. The Salesperson

The salesperson immediately loves what they try and makes it their personal goal to get every other student to try it as well. They are often more persuasive than any adult, and the more salespeople at a taste-test, the higher the rate of participation.

2. The Unsure Skeptic 

Some skeptics are nervous while others are just generally suspicious. Either way they can usually be swayed to give it a try – especially if a salesperson is sitting at their table.

3. The Cool Cucumber

These students show no signs of being intimidated by trying something new, but neither do they show signs of excitement. They calmly try it, state their opinion, and move on with the rest of their lunch wondering why you bothered them in the first place.

4. The Thespian 

Whether they are stoked to try it….

or appalled that you’d even ask,

these students have mastered the art of making their opinions and emotions visible and audible to all.

5. The Resolute “No” 

Sometimes stoic, sometimes outspoken, the resolute “no” is often accompanied by head shaking and eye-contact aversion, no matter how many times you ask. Only a salesperson can convince them to try it.

6. The Storyteller

Common stories include “I’m allergic” (not to be confused with student’s who are actually allergic), “I tried this yesterday,” and “one time at my house…” Storytellers are often also thespians or skeptics.

At the end of the day, most kids were willing to try the stew, and no matter how they got there our reaction was always the same:

The post The 6 Types of Elementary School Taste-Testers appeared first on FoodCorps.

Our month began on Wednesday, October 15 at Frankfort Elementary where the students sampled baked apples with cinnamon prepared by their Food Service Director, Jenna Noffsinger

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On Thursday, October 21st, the students at Platte River Elementary tasted apple crisp!

Closing out the taste tests for the month, students at Interlochen Community school voted on baked apples prepared by Stephanie and I after trying them on Thursday, October 29th.

For November? We’re coming for you, winter squash!

The post The Results Are In! appeared first on FoodCorps.

The post What’s Growing On? Apples! appeared first on FoodCorps.

The post Green Beans Bring Smiles to Bayyari for Farm to School Month appeared first on FoodCorps.

The post Jazzing up the Early Childhood Center lunchroom in New London! appeared first on FoodCorps.

“It looks like a baby alien!” “A space ship!” “A forest of mini Christmas trees!”

Those were just a few of the remarks I heard when I arrived at Traverse Heights Elementary School in Traverse City to promote the locally grown produce being served in the cafeteria.

What vegetable could provoke such an engaged and dramatic response from hungry students? On Sept. 17, the “baby alien” in question was a head of Romanesco cauliflower, grown by Lutz Farms in Kaleva and served up for lunch.

Romanesco cauliflower, for those unfamiliar with this broccoli cousin, does look a bit extraterrestrial at first glance. It’s easy to see how curious kids might come up with more than a few imaginative identities for this brilliant brassica, with its lime-green hue and a spiky, multifaceted surface. But there’s much more to this funky vegetable than its appearance; Romanesco is rich in vitamin C and contains more beta-carotene than standard white cauliflower.

Read the full post about Meghan’s first cafeteria taste test here.

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