Wellness in the School with Chefs
Giving Back - WITS
Educating kids on the importance of healthy eating and seasonal ingredients is something I had always seen as valuable when developing a relationship with food. I partnered with an organization called WITS, Wellness in the School, to teach kids about the food they may not usually like and getting them interested in what they are putting inside their bodies.
Wellness in the School is a program established in 2005 in New York City led by Nancy Easton. This all began when a group of concerned parents united together to have a goal of creating a better future for not only their children but children nationwide. They believed that healthier bodies create a healthier mind and that school environments have a direct impact on student health and performance. Fast forward to today and the program now has 4 main markets throughout the nation with a reach of 95,000 students in over 190 public schools on a daily basis. They are continuing to expand their national footprint by offering help to schools by becoming a healthier place for students to learn and grow in every way possible.
I had just started my wellness journey mid-2018 and was looking for an opportunity to volunteer on my days off when I discovered WITS. After doing some research I found that they had a West Coast operation in the Bay Area and quickly got in contact with Nancy Easton and Holly Greene Rottman. I saw the dedication WITS had for helping students connect the dots from farm to the cutting board and understanding the nutrients in the food to the finished product and I knew this was the program I had been searching for.
I started my journey with WITS food lab back in March 2019 with Chef Nancy Larson. The Food Lab is a program set out by WITS that takes place in the classroom of schools. The purpose is to teach kids from kindergarten to 5th grade how to prepare dishes while also practicing kitchen etiquette such as safety with tools. We first use kid-friendly knives and teach them how to properly hold it, what to do when the knife isn’t in use, and the hand positioning when cutting up the food. While preparing the dish, we also educate them on the nutritional facts on exactly they are preparing and at the end, which is my favorite part seeing them enjoy the dish they have prepared for themselves. After tasting the dish we begin to see that each and everyone has their own preferences and this is where they get to use their chef words like, needs more salt, need to be sweeter or need more acid.
Last spring, the WITS lab was about making Potato Salad and I thought what better way to teach the kids about this dish than to bring in a potato farmer. I brought in David Little from Little Organic Farms in Petaluma to educate the students in the process of how he dry farms his potatoes to make the crispiest results. We did a side comparison between a dry farm potato and conventional potato to see if the classroom could make a decision on which potato tasted the best and the vote was the dry farm potato.
Another fun food lab we had done recently was on making Apple Melt Tortilla Sandwiches. With this recipe, I had the opportunity to teach the students how to use apples as well as quince which, is like a cross between an apple and a pear. With ingredients, it is very easy to just use it for its sole purpose and discard the scraps but in my kitchen, we try to have zero waste which is something I emphasized when teaching this specific dish. The meat of the fruit was used to make a paste by adding sugar and stewing down until it was caramelized. The skins and cores were then added into a pot of water and steeped for 10 hours in order to extract the natural pectin of the fruit. After, we strain it finely and reduce until the liquid becomes a natural honey texture.
It is an amazing experience teaching the kids how to make these dishes and seeing the joy in their faces when they say they “can’t wait to make it at home for their family”. What I love about this program is that it educated them on how to develop a healthy relationship with the food they had no interest in before and giving them the opportunity to try new dishes that can inspire them to experiment with other cuisines. Another thing I really enjoy is helping the students find their chef words like its lacks salt, or something sweet, or more acid instead of coming to the conclusion that they did not like it from the initial taste.
WITS is an amazing program and inspires kids to share their newly acquired knowledge with their families. Programs like these have been shown to positively influence children’s food preferences and behaviors and are the reason why I find such joy in volunteering at programs like this one. If you would like to donate please click the link: http://www.wellnessintheschools.org/donate/.