After the day’s meals are done on a recent Tuesday, Gilbert Community Schools director of food service Deb Purcell shuffles through a stack of papers. Gilbert, a town north of Ames in central Iowa, serves about 1400-1600 meals a day. 

“This is what I do, planning for a week,” Purcell says pointing to columns on a page. “And there’s actually seven pages minimum that go with each day.”

She’s counting cups of vegetables and documenting other details about every meal she’s served to comply with stringent federal rules. Her job could soon get easier.

The Trump administration has been loosening some of the regulations. It canceled planned sodium reductions and allowed low-fat flavored milk last year. One of the current proposals would ease the rules for meat and meat alternatives at breakfast and the types of vegetables required at lunch. …

At Wright Elementary in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, all of the students can eat breakfast or lunch at no cost to their families thanks to a federal grant. Without that, about 75 percent of the students would qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

On a recent day, students choose chicken alfredo over noodles, grilled cheese or pizza from the hot line and then serve themselves applesauce, raw broccoli florets or hot mixed vegetables at the veggie cart. They can also try something new — the Flavor Bar. 

A boy points to a tub of yellow strips and rings on the small table and says, “What’s that?” Dainese Pridegon tells him they are banana peppers, and another student pipes up, “They’re really good!” 

Pridegon helps the students serve themselves peppers or sprinkle cinnamon on their applesauce. She’s part of FoodCorps, a national service program that brings lessons on healthy eating to schools. It’s rolling out pilot Flavor Bars in 15 cafeterias to literally spice up school meals. 

Pridegon guides the students as they pour hot sauce onto their trays or shake chili powder over their pasta.

“I don’t want them to drench their food in the flavor and not taste the food,” she says. 

This is the first week of the Flavor Bar here, but Pridegon also set one up at another Cedar Rapids school.

“I remember someone wanted to put cinnamon on their mashed potatoes once and I try to, like, coach and encourage them not to do silly things but actually do things they’re going to want to eat.”

Students voted on toppings they wanted on the Flavor Bar, and then it was up to Pridegon to figure out which ones would work within the rules for calories, sodium and so forth. Parmesan cheese and salt were non-starters.

“We definitely had to make sure that all of our flavors would keep us within our limits and not take us over,” she says.

Read more

The post Kids Have Been Eating Healthier School Meals, But Adults May Change The Rules appeared first on FoodCorps.

Tamsyn Jones for Practical Farmers of Iowa

Natasha Hegmann has found a happy balance with where the farmers market fits in her direct-marketing plan. As an introvert, she values the solitary time she spends working at Turkey River Farm, the diversified produce, hog and agroforestry farm she runs with her husband, Pete Kerns, near Elkport.

But as a beginning farmer passionate about serving her rural community, she also loves the weekly opportunity to meet and interact with her customers at the Guttenberg Farmers Market, about 18 miles away.

“I love it because it’s a small-town farmers market on the banks of the Mississippi River in a grassy park,” Natasha says. “And at this park, we know the names of most of our customers, and they have come to know us well, even though we’ve only been farming four years.” …

Natasha and Pete met in Montana while serving in FoodCorps. They knew early on that they wanted to start a farm together focused on their mutual interest in food and social justice – and the Midwest made sense. Natasha grew up in Iowa, while Pete, originally from the Chicago area, had potential access to family land in southern Illinois.

The couple started exploring land access options while still in Montana. They looked at farms in Wisconsin and considered Pete’s family land in Illinois. Ultimately, the opportunity to rent land from the Communia Corporation led them to choose Iowa. “We did not do a thorough investigation of the market for vegetables and pork in Clayton County before we moved here,” Natasha explains. …

For Natasha, seeing the unexpected role farmers markets would play in their fledgling CSA underscored a key lesson: establishing trust takes time. Being mindful of this is valuable for any relationship in life, Natasha says, but she notes it’s especially important for beginning farmers to bear in mind.

“It’s really important to have patience with relationships, if direct-marketing is what you’re trying to do,” Natasha says. “It takes people time to become comfortable with new people, ideas and products – and it takes multiple exposures. That’s one thing I learned in FoodCorps about kids. They need to see a new food or vegetable several times before they become comfortable with it.

“With vegetables and a CSA, you’re asking a customer to put a lot of trust in you – and money in your operation. You’re asking them to make a commitment, and also deal with weird vegetables sometimes. That’s kind of a big ask, and we really had to establish trust with customers that we knew what we were doing and could bring a consistent supply of beautiful, fresh vegetables to market every week.”

Read more

The post A Farm With A Focus on Community appeared first on FoodCorps.

By Deb Kunkle, Oelwein Daily Register

Getting children to choose healthy snacks or opt for vegetables over cookies is challenging, but Emma Dubay is meeting that challenge head-on in Wings Park and Little Husky classrooms.

The post Iowa FoodCorps Service Member Brings Excitement to Healthy Eating for Students appeared first on FoodCorps.

Serving as a FoodCorps AmeriCorps service member can help you discover new, meaningful career paths. Hear from three alumni about how their experiences with FoodCorps led them to exciting and meaningful career opportunities post-service.

Apply now

Apply to serve by March 13.

The post Video: A Year of Service, A Lifetime of Impact appeared first on FoodCorps.

I know that nearly 90 percent of the students at the 3 elementary schools I serve qualify for free or reduced price lunch, and thus are likely coming from food insecure families. However, these moments in which I can clearly see the face of hunger still have a great effect on me. Hunger is generally associated with people unable to obtain enough food, and these days, we know a nourishing meal is more than just the quantity of calories; it is about quality. Those two cookies may have had “enough” calories but did not contain the vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, fiber and other life-giving components that whole, unprocessed food contains.

As a FoodCorps service member, I help connect kids to real food to help them grow up healthy. I do this by engaging kids directly in growing vegetables in the school garden as well as making healthy snacks in classrooms and afterschool programs. I also work with teachers to have them lead these positive experiences, providing them with training and resources to better incorporate fruits and vegetables and garden activities into their classes.

Through these activities, kids not only eat real food, but learn skills to grow and prepare nutritious meals on their own. However, efforts to expand school gardens, prepare food, or increase access to local produce are a struggle in my schools. Parents cannot support farm to school opportunities because they work multiple low-paying jobs.  Teachers must focus their instructional time on boosting test scores rather than offering food-based activities. Staff turnover is high, preventing continued, high levels of commitment to school gardens.

Though these fundamental issues are nearly impossible to tackle in a short-term position that does not allow political advocacy, my experience with FoodCorps has given me the support to one day become a leader in this field and make significant, lasting change. Service members have the opportunity to join Communities of Learning, Inquiry, and Practice to delve deeper into policy, community organizing, and topics of equity. At national trainings, we get to hear from food system leaders such as LaDonna Redmond and Deb Eschmeyer. We are encouraged to ask tough questions to our national staff, are given platform to our voices through media, and are involved in important changes to our organization and future efforts to foster equity, diversity, and inclusion. These experiences and opportunities for reflection, discussion, and growth strengthen our organization and its emerging leaders in tackling larger issues.

In my years of service, I have helped to nourish kids by increasing access to food that will feed their bodies and minds. But just as importantly, I have had direct connections with hungry kids and the struggles of the communities they come from. FoodCorps not only helps kids to grow up healthy but gives service members the experiences and tools to one day address larger systemic issues that result in hunger.

This essay was a runner up for the 2016 FoodCorps Victory Growers Award. The award, sponsored by C&S Wholesale Grocers,  highlights that many children struggle with hunger and food insecurity, and that the food they receive at school is the most important meal they will get all day.

The post Real Food and Real Skills to Combat Hunger appeared first on FoodCorps.

New York, New York

Together, New York AmeriCorps members packed 500,000 meals for needy New Yorkers.

Springdale, Arkansas

Moriah brought the school community together to get the school garden ready for fall lessons and further parent engagement.

Traverse City, Michigan

Julia built a school garden for her senior project in high school in 2012 with the help of then-FoodCorps member Kirsten Gerbatsch. The garden had fallen into a bit of disrepair recently, but thankfully Julia’s back—as a FoodCorps service member! For her 9/11 Day of Service project, she gave the garden some TLC so that students and teachers are inspired to start using it again. Read her reflection about the experience.

Connecticut

Our entire cohort of Connecticut corps members joined with the Connecticut Food Justice Project’s AmeriCorps VISTA members for a workday at New Haven Farms.

Athens, Georgia

Our Athens service members and alumna Stephanie (who now works for our Athens service site) also joined with AmeriCorps VISTA members for a garden work day with Athens Land Trust.

Des Moines, Iowa

Jenetta and Esperanza, our service members at Des Moines Public Schools, helped out with a Habitat for Humanity building project.

Washington, District of columbia

Service Member Kathryn Mitchell led a group on cleaning up the memorial garden at Leckie Elementary School, her service site. She led a group of students in making cement mosaic stones, pictured at right.

The post FoodCorps Members Commemorate September 11th with Service appeared first on FoodCorps.

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To be fair, this salad contained not only radishes, which the students KNEW were spicy because we had tasted them raw the week before with mixed reactions, but other intimidating vegetables as well (I’m looking at you, kohlrabi). But to everyone’s surprise, including mine, this salad was a huge huge hit. The older kids who prepared the salad loved it. When there was a lot left over they offered it to the younger students, who also loved it. I offered some to parents who came to pick up their students. I sent home recipes. This week at our summer gardening program a girl told me her family made the radish salad at home. This salad changed hearts and minds. Here is the recipe:

Radish Salad

1 bunch (about 1.5 cups) radishes, chopped into small cubes
1 large bulb of kohlrabi, peeled and cubed
1 medium cucumber,  cubed
1/2 red onion, diced
2 Tbsp cilantro, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Pinch of salt and black pepper to taste

Students can help chop up all the vegetables. Add everything into a large bowl. Squeeze lemon juice and sprinkle salt and pepper over the vegetables. Mix well, then serve and taste together. Have seconds, thirds, spread the news about this delicious radish salad through the whole school, share with families and send home recipes. Try other radish recipes. Enjoy the freshly harvested spring radish deliciousness for as long as you can, until the summer heat makes all your remaining radishes go to seed. Finally, bid a tearful farewell to radish season and embrace all the opportunities that summer vegetables have to offer.

Have a rad summer.

The post Recipe: Radish Salad appeared first on FoodCorps.

“Always pass on what you have learned.” -Yoda

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I’m Emily Neal. I’ll spare you the details of my long job title, and introduce you to our rural region of Northeast Iowa. Our members serve an area the size of Connecticut, with only about 150,000 people spread across six counties, where folks travel to work, to shop, to play, and to go to the doctor. Our area encompasses two of the poorest counties in the state where there is the highest percentage of single parent homes, and where one of our communities was subject to the largest immigration raid in United States history. Our corps members serve “districts” (instead of towns or cities) because each district is under 1,200 students and they travel tirelessly to build connections and collect resources to make their communities thrive. That is what collectively over the last five years members have done, and done extraordinarily well. This is FoodCorps in Northeast Iowa.

Issac Newton said,

“If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

For the last five years, we have had the honor and great pleasure to host members who have built a succession of successes—some small, some big—all taking a shovel to the dirt, and digging just a little deeper. While many of them are not giants per se (in fact few of them even barely reach the five foot mark) they are the mightiest of women (okay, there were two guys). Each one broke down a new barrier for her successor. Each one left her mark. Each year, each school imagined they could never replace the beloved member before them, yet within a matter of weeks each new member became the new Vegetable Lady, the new Song and Dance Guy, or the new Food Teacher.

In 5 years, they have built 24 school gardens where there once were none. One-third of our school districts now have at least one building recognized by the Healthier US School Challenge. Local food purchases in schools have soared from $6,000 to over $70,000. They have provided over 3,000 hours of nutrition education, but more than that, together, each one has made a positive difference in the lives of children, giving them new foods to love, connecting their hands to the soil, lowering their blood sugar, and raising their self-esteem. They’ve cooked, dug, planted, and boy have they had meetings! Meetings with teachers, with parents, and with administrators have built relationships around the promise of FoodCorps, making relationships that endure not by any one individual, but by a mission driven by the notion that Together, We Grow Healthy Kids.

Each one of them, each one of us, has this sphere of influence through the relationships we make, the activities we create, and our FoodCorps members create when they reach out—when they reach out with all of you—because of the strength, intention, positivity, and hard work that is this FoodCorps family.

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