The Value of Fresh Produce

By Angie Newsome
ANEWSOME@CITIZEN-TIMES.COM

August 15, 2006 12:15 am

SANDY MUSH — A group of women scooped slips of red and orange fruits from Vanessa Campbell’s cutting board last week, popping them into their mouths, humming “yums” and “ahs” that are music to a farmer’s ear.

Nearly everyone in the group manages a cafeteria at an Asheville City School, and last week they toured the sprawling Full Sun Farm in Sandy Mush. They roamed the field with Campbell, farm co-owner, who pulled vegetables from the brown dirt, sliced them and served them to managers like Ameran Kelley, from Asheville City Schools Preschool, and Linda Greene from Vance Elementary School.

Part of a “Growing Minds Farm to School” tour of Campbell’s farm, these women are on the frontline of changing how young children and teenagers view fresh fruits and vegetables like the tomatoes, corn and cucumbers they sampled at the farm.

“Y’all are the people there with the children, there to influence them and change their attitudes,” said Emily Jackson, director the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project’s program. “You are so important to this whole process.”

That process is aiming to reduce childhood obesity.

While more than 60 percent of Buncombe County adults were considered overweight and/or obese in 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the School Health Advisory Council found that 36 percent of all Buncombe County children had a weight concern in 2004.

And the Growing Minds, Healthy Bodies initiative, a partnership among Children First of Buncombe County, Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project and MANNA Food Bank, says that 32 percent of kindergarteners in Buncombe County have a weight problem. Forty-two percent of fifth graders also have a problem.

Fresher foods can help, said Barbara Baker, manager of Claxton Elementary School’s cafeteria.

“With this garden, you can get the best,” she said. “You don’t have any second choice.”

Part of the key in reducing obesity and keeping children healthy, the managers agreed, is introducing children to fresh foods early. Many don’t get vegetables and fruits at home, so schools are the places many first learn to love vegetables like snow peas or eggplant.

Sometimes it’s easy.

“Most of the time, the kids like things more than we do,” Baker said. “We cut a lot of tomatoes.”

But as children get older, convincing them to give up fries is harder.

“It has to start in kindergarten and build it up,” Jones Elementary School’s cafeteria manager, Margaret Ponder, said.

That often depends on the managers. Jackson said one of the purposes of bringing the managers to the farm is to show the quality and variety of foods available.

Full Sun Farm is a Community Supported Agriculture farm, meaning families and others can buy a share and, in return, get boxes of in-season, fresh fruits and vegetables grown there. Jackson bought a share for the managers and each will get a box to share with cafeteria staff and to show children new produce.

So while children learn about fresh produce, so are the people charged with making and serving their food.

And education goes both ways.

“When we started learning about this, I started eating more vegetable and fruits,” Greene said. And she lost 25 pounds herself.

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