When kids are first told that some of their favorite foods may contain crushed beetles or car wax, nervous laughter and groans intermingle as they wonder how those random additives got into their food. It raises the question: What else have we been eating and not known about?
This is the mystery the Pure Food Kids Workshop sets out to unravel for school kids throughout the Seattle Metropolitan area. Two years into the program, it’s proving to do just that.
Founder Kurt Beecher Dammeier claims, “Now that we’ve been executing this Workshop for two full years, our experiences in the classroom tell us that the students are not only processing the information, they are using it to make healthy eating choices.”
Because the class teaches fourth through sixth graders, some students have had the opportunity to take the class more than once. Those students, returning for their second round of the Workshop, share that not only do they remember the information, but that it has changed the way they eat. “Second year students are particularly aware of added sweeteners in their foods and they are more likely to actively read nutrition labels,” says Alison Leber, Program Director.
The goal of the Workshop is to give students the tools to decipher the nutritional information on their food packages, rather than just give them a list of dos and don’ts. During the 2½ hour class, students are taught how to read ingredients lists and nutritional facts, as well as how to understand the marketing claims made on the food package. The highlight of the class is a hands-on cooking session where the students prepare a whole food chili – everything from cutting the vegetables to measuring out the spices.
In the 2007-2008 school year, the Pure Food Kids Workshop rolled out to 166 schools in the Seattle Metropolitan area, along with an additional 10 schools in Portland, reaching over 4,600 students. The classes are taught from a volunteer base of over 50 volunteers, with no additional fees or manpower required from the schools to teach the class.
With its success, demand for the Workshop to become available in new school districts has increased. Leber has also received requests from Denver, San Francisco and other markets across the country to make the program more widely available. “Our plan right now is to expand into these markets as we are able, while continuing to penetrate the Seattle and Portland markets more deeply."
