The Sweetness of Food Day! | The Green Heart Project
Donate

The Sweetness of Food Day!

With our fifth year of Food Day celebrations behind us, we thought we would take a few minutes to reflect on how Food Day, and its mission, ties into who we are and what we do here at the Green Heart Project.

Starting in 2011, Food Day was created as a way to inspire Americans to improve their diets and local, state, and national food policies for the better. So on October 24th of every year, tens of thousands of Americans participate in local events aimed to celebrate healthy, affordable, and sustainable food, and make conscious choices about what they eat. Observing Food day can be as simple as making a small change, like drinking water instead of soda, serving up more fruits and veggies for your family, or, like us, you may celebrate in a big way!

For the past five years our Food Day celebrations have centered around Sweet Potatoes.

img_9296 

Sweet potatoes have been grown and eaten throughout American history. This native plant of central and South America was domesticated in Central America at least 5,000 years ago and have been stable crops in tropical and warm temperate regions since. The first recorded Europeans to taste sweet potatoes were members of Christopher Columbus’s expedition in 1492. Sweet potatoes are popular around the world and have been an important part of the diet in the United States for most of history. Here in Charleston, the climate fits the perfect conditions for sweet potato growth

Not only are sweet potatoes an important part of U.S. history, but from a public health perspective, they are extremely beneficial to human health. Sweet potatoes are extremely high in Vitamin A, which is great for skin, eyes, and overall health. They also contain vitamins C and B6, potassium, and manganese, all of which are beneficial to our immune systems and blood. Sweet potatoes also contain fiber that helps our bodies to absorb the natural sugars in a beneficial way.

With all their healthy benefits and the ideal climate in Charleston for their growth, sweet potatoes are a great food to make part of our school garden programs, not only as a part of food day – but all year!

Every spring, we plan sweet potatoes in our gardens with our students. They learn about proper gardening techniques for planting the sweet potatoe plugs, ensuring they get enough water and space. During the summer, while our students are on summer vacation, our sweet potatoes thrive, covering our beds, soaking up the sun (and helping to mitigate some of our garden work for the summer!).

img_9289

Then, when our students return in the fall – October comes around…which is a big month! October is both National Farm-to-School Month and the month of Food Day and harvesting sweet potatoes is a great way to spend it. Our students take part in the digging the potatoes out of the ground, washing them, weighing them, and seeing what their seedlings were able to produce! Our potatoes cure for 2-3 weeks and then are used in our programs to teach our students about how to make sweet potato chips. The rest of the sweet potatoes go to the school cafeterias to be used in school lunches.

In the spirit of Farm-to-School Month, our kiddos are engaged with the production of the food they are consuming from start to finish, and in the spirit of Food Day they are celebrating food that is locally sources, healthy and sustainable!

All of our Green Heart Project after-school programs participated in our lesson “Farm to Table: Sweet Potatoes.” The lesson brings together many people from our Green Heart team and network to educate our students about a healthy recipe and the journey of their sweet potato harvest from the ground to their forks. Members from our Board of Directors joined us to serve as Green Heart Buddies and guest Chefs, educated our students about healthy choices, kitchen safety, knife skills, and how to understand nutrition labels.
Within the fun and excitement of enjoying the fruits of their labor, the students walked away with much more than a tasty snack; our lesson focused on food justice, the many people and steps that it takes to put food from the ground onto our plates, and reasons why enjoying a home cooked meal can be more nutritious and meaningful than opening a frozen dinner package or bag of chips. The recently passed candy-filled holiday provided a great platform for students to learn about the importance of reading and understanding ingredients and nutrition labels; they dove deep into each word on a package of sustainably produced sweet potato chips and learned what the terms mean for both their bodies and their planet.  “I’m going to ask my parents if we can give out fruits and vegetables instead of candy for Halloween!” exclaimed 6-year-old Suzette from our Sullivan’s Island Elementary Program. Their excitement was contagious; not only did the students learn a great deal from their Green Heart Buddies, but each and every Buddy and Board Member learned new ways in which we can appreciate food in a healthy and thankful manner.

mitchell-sweet-potato-harvest

This year our sweet potato harvest totaled 330 pounds across our 5 school garden programs – meaning that in all we’ve harvested over a whopping 1,500 pounds of sweet potatoes!!!  

And as to where many of our harvested sweet potatoes from this year went? … That’s right… Food Day!

At 6:30am on October 24th, our Executive Director, Drew, got into the kitchen at Mitchell Math and Science Elementary School to help with Food Day preparations. With the Charleston County School District Food Nutrition Services and the fabulous cafeteria staff at Mitchell Elementary lead by Inez Washington, Drew helped to chop and prepare the sweet potatoes. The kitchen staff, along with Drew’s helping hands, put the sweet potatoes onto trays and cooked them up in time for lunches!

food-day-2016

The kids at Mitchell, both those who took part in the production of the potatoes and those who don’t take part in Green Heart, were able to enjoy the delicious fall harvest!

Our Food Day, and month of October as a whole, was a huge success and we’re so thankful for all those who helped make it possible. We’re counting down the days until we begin the sweet potato process again!

 

 

Posted by

On November 8, 2016
In Uncategorized

Comments on this post