Promoting Health Literacy through Food Revolution Day Activities

The Tutorial Center, Inc. is a nonprofit community education center in Vermont. For many years now, we have been using the growing and eating of vegetables to engage adult ed students (and other at-risk young adults) and improve their health literacy.  On May 15th we’re amping up our rally cry in support of Chef Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day – a global push to make food education a part of everyday curriculum world-wide. Over 750,000 people have already signed the petition urging this important change!

Although the public messaging of Food Revolution Day speaks of "children" and "K-12 curriculum," we feel passionately that the call to action is as relevant to adults and adult education programming. Since 2006, food and agriculture have been a key part of our work with young adult students as well as school-age students — through our popular YAP! program and the way TTC at Smokey House includes cooking as part of YouthWork & Learn’s alternative school program. We understand that arming people with familiarity with good, healthy foods can make all the difference in our students’ (and their families') well-being. Better food choices mean less obesity, reduced diet-related disease, and improved overall health for every body. We regularly witness these impacts on the adults we work with, and hear about it from our young student-parents as they talk about how they've changed how and what they feed their children.

As part of our Food Revolution Day activities all 3 of our learning centers in southwest Vermont will be featuring special cooking sessions using recipes from our newly published e-book, Garden Candy Basics. As part of our food-related program development, we created the ebook to provide an accessible modern-tech resource that would help people take easy steps to increase their eating of vegetables. Instructors will be engaging students in adult education and ESOL classes (and also our younger students) in learning center-wide activities highlighting the health outcomes of better eating. 

Vegetable pizzas, blended tomatoes on rustic bread, and spiralized veggie salads are a few of the easy, affordable and delicious dishes they’ll be creating and enjoying—reinforcing the idea that healthy choices benefit both the individual and the community.

As a teacher tells us: “Many times the students have said they thought they didn’t like something, but they like what we made. I guide us to meals that are healthy, tasty, relatively inexpensive, and easy to make at home. These are survival skills they’re learning.”

We encourage you to consider adding engaging food-related curricula to your adult ed programming. It works.

 

 

 

Comments

Hi Jack:

Thanks so much for sharing your program's experience of putting food and nutrition into the adult education curriculum -- and Food Revolution Day!  Several years ago I taught a study skills class that was required before students could re-enter a healthcare certificate program after failing out.  The two things that students liked the most were test-taking strategies and a set of quick, nutritious (and delicious) supper recipes students shared with each other.  It turned out that juggling family and school responsibilities was keenly felt at supper time.  Sharing a good meal together helped maintain family harmony and the students' self esteem.

Do you know about Food Revolution Day (it is new to me)?  Have you grown a gardens with your students?  Created a recipe book?

Cynthia

Health Literacy Moderator