‘Foodplay’ Dishes Up Healthy Eating
Courtesy of: Glenn Wallace
Released: Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Tags: Health, Food, Education, s'Cool Food
Getting kids to eat a healthy diet is no easy task, but area schools have been using approaches such as school gardens and special presentations to try and spread the message.
On Monday, La Cañada Elementary School hosted the Emmy Award-winning theater show “Foodplay” for two performances.
The play features a juggling coach teaching a young juggler in training — “Johnny Junkfood” — that some foods are not good for the human body.
After Johnny (Carlton Hall) snacks on a bunch of cola and snacks, he sporadically leaps around the stage for a while before collapsing in a heap, which drew laughter from the elementary audience.
“See, it gives him lots of energy fast, but it’s energy that won’t last,” said Coach (played by Tyson Savoretti).
Through a series of lessons, Johnny learns how to eat healthier by dividing foods into two groups: Go Foods, which help give you energy to go all day, and Whoa Foods, which should only be eaten in small doses because they are high in fat, sugar and additives.
“Wow, 10 teaspoons of sugar in one can of soda!” Johnny said after Coach listed the different ingredients in soda.
The lesson included reading ingredient labels, getting five servings of fruits and vegetables, eating a balanced diet, and getting something to eat every morning.
“We always touch on healthy breakfast in general, as a good habit for kids to get into,” said the play’s stage manager, S.M. Payson, after the performance.
Foodplay is just the latest method by which local educators have been dishing up healthy-eating education to area children. The Foodplay production was brought to Lompoc through funding provided by the Orfalea Foundation, based in Santa Barbara.
The Orfalea Foundation is the same group that has provided grant funding to help upgrade the Lompoc Unified School District’s central kitchen, and also helped fund and organize the foundation of school gardens at five elementary schools, including La Cañada.
Planting at the garden took place earlier this year, according to La Cañada special education teacher Dana Friley, although education lessons involving healthy eating began before that.
Orfalea educators were invited into elementary classrooms in October, when a “junior chefs cooking day” event taught children about vegetables, and showed them how to prepare a ratatouille dish, sending the recipe home with children to try for themselves.
“Around Thanksgiving break, they took home a bean soup recipes along with the beans,” said Friley.
Since then, each grad at the school has been assigned a plot of the garden. The fourth-grade section, for example, will be used to grow the same crops that were traditionally raised at the Spanish missions, tying into the same subject as the grade’s history lessons.