September 8, 2015 | By Melinda Clynes of Model D Media
This story looks at how Michigan programs and their Detroit counterparts are working to ensure our youngest eaters are putting wholesome and healthy food into their bodies.
When a child becomes unhealthy early in life, everyone shoulders the burden – the wealthy and the poor, the black and the white, you and me.
The child herself could be faced with chronic issues related to being
overweight or malnourished: sickness, poor school performance, missed
school days, low self-esteem, lack of energy, and the list goes on.
These
issues have long-term implications for how much a young person will
contribute to society – or deplete from the public coffers. In short,
society pays for the cost of hunger and food insecurity.
Food
insecure children are 31 percent more likely to be hospitalized. Total
health costs for obese children (child food insecurity is associated
with the risk of obesity because low-nutrient food is cheap and readily
available) are more than 200 percent higher than an average child’s
health costs (No Kid Hungry Report, June 2015).
And while free
or reduced-price school lunch programs assist with nutritional needs for
older youth, that’s often too late to impact a developing child.
This
story looks at how Michigan programs and their Detroit counterparts are
working to ensure our youngest eaters are putting wholesome and healthy
food into their bodies.
Farm to early childhood gets broccoli onto the highchair
MSU’s Center for Regional Food Systems
is playing a huge role in getting good food to children in their early
years. It recently released “Farm to Early Childhood Programs
Step-by-Step Guide,” which outlines in detail how to bring fresh,
Michigan-grown food into childcare and preschool programs so that kids
can develop good eating habits from the get go.
Its focus is
young children, from infants to 6-year-olds – the kids you’ll find at
home day cares, Early Head Start and Head Start programs, and other
private or faith-based child care facilities. Along with showing how to
create bridges between farmers and institutions to bring wholesome food
onto pint-size tables and highchairs, the guide introduces other ways to
promote a culture of good eating, such as creating children’s gardens
or offering learning opportunities around agriculture and local food.
These programs can really make a difference in areas like Detroit, where more than half of all children are living in poverty.
“People
living in high poverty areas face so many real and pressing challenges
every day, and families may have difficulty in just getting enough food
for everyone for the day or for the week,” says Colleen Matts, farm to
institution specialist with the MSU Center for Regional Food Systems.
“Institutions like early childhood programs and schools serve as
reliable sources of good food for vulnerable children in these areas.”
The
MSU CRFS has been tackling issues and challenges of school-aged eaters
for a long time, but the farm to early childhood movement is a new
pursuit.
“Farm to School in early childhood programs is just in the beginning
stages, but we’re learning from some of the early childhood programs in
our MI Farm to School grant program about the opportunities unique to
this arena,” says Matts. “From our experience so far, it seems that
education connections are ripe and food purchasing and menu planning are
a bit more flexible than for school food programs.”
The smaller program size, too, lends itself to purchasing locally at farmers’ markets or through farm share programs.
Backing the statewide movement locally is the Detroit Food & Fitness Collaborative, a group of 40 organizations
developing ways to ensure that everyone in Detroit – especially the
most vulnerable children – has access to affordable, healthy,
locally-grown food, as well as opportunities to be physically active.
Detroit is one of nine communities across the United States selected by
the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to institute community change in the areas of food, health, and fitness.
According
to W. DeWayne Wells, project director for DFFC, the Schools Work Group
of the collaborative is putting a major focus on replicating the good
food practices used by Detroit Public Schools
to the prekindergarten setting. DPS Office of School Nutrition
currently sources 22 percent of its food from Michigan, is bringing more
Michigan-grown produce into the lunchroom, is striving toward “clean
label” foods (free of dyes, trans fats, corn syrup, stabilizers, etc.),
and operates 72 school gardens.
“We’re working to identify ways
to spearhead, track, and support good food in early childhood settings
and promote healthy first foods for infants,” says Wells. The term “good
food” describes food that’s healthy, green, fair and affordable.
Members of the group hail from the Ecology Center, MSU Center for Regional Food Systems, Keep Growing Detroit, Black Family Development,
and Detroit Public Schools. Betti Wiggins, executive director of DPS
Office of School Nutrition and co-chair of the group, has garnered
national attention for her work in bringing healthier food to students.
She wants to see the good food movement make it down to the youngest
learners.
“I believe we all really want to change the food system,” says Wiggins. “If the school district can’t promote that, who will?”
It’s
not hard to argue that bringing fresh food to children in preschools
and daycares makes sense; young children’s brains are more susceptible
to developmental problems if their environment is impoverished or
deprived. But how do we then make sure that families have access to
healthy food so that children don’t go home to a house full of
nutritionally void snacks, meals, and beverages?
Incentivizing healthy choices for young families
In terms of healthy food access, the opportunities are growing in
Detroit: neighborhood farm stands and farm markets present options
throughout the growing season; Whole Foods
in Midtown has brought alternative options to surrounding
neighborhoods; and the city’s two Meijer stores have huge produce
departments and many organic options.
But it is Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) that is proving to be one of the best options for local families. The statewide healthy food incentive program, designed by Fair Food Network,
matches the amount of SNAP (food stamp) purchases made at farmers
markets with additional dollars to spend on fresh, regional produce. So a
family that spends $10 in SNAP benefits receives an additional $10 in
DUFB to buy Michigan-grown fruits and vegetables.
The
program has now expanded to grocery locations; DUFB can be used at 10
Detroit markets, including Glory Supermarket, Imperial Fresh, Lafayette
Foods, and Old Redford Food Center.
Incentivizing healthy
purchases – versus limiting choice by penalizing unhealthy purchases –
through programs like DUFB is hugely successful. A whopping 93 percent
of participating SNAP users at farmers markets report eating more fruits
and vegetables because of the program. Just as important, 83 percent
report buying fewer low-nutrition snacks.
More than half of DUFB
customers have children living in their households, and of those,
nearly 40 percent have children from newborns to five-year-olds. The
program has been so successful, Fair Food Network was recently awarded a
$5.1 million USDA grant to expand DUFB across the state, and FFN will
be helping to launch Double Up programs in other states.
Access and education: the nutrition must-haves
For young families with transportation barriers who still may be
challenged getting to a farmers market or a store with fresh produce,
mobile distribution sites provide a solution.
The Food Bank Council of Michigan, with funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund,
runs a statewide program, Michigan Food Bank Access to Nutrition, that
delivers fruits and vegetables to families in need through a system of
mobile distribution sites. Food banks, like Gleaners Community Food Bank
in Detroit, execute the deliveries, getting upwards of 20 pounds of
produce into the kitchens of local families at each mobile distribution.
But access in and of itself does not solve the problems of child
malnutrition, family food insecurity, or child obesity. If a parent
receives a bunch of kale but does not know how to prepare it, that food
goes to waste and that nutrition does not help developing children. The
latest iteration of MI-FBAN recognizes this and is incorporating cooking
demonstrations and nutrition education into mobile distributions across
the state.
Cooking Matters is another program with impressive
results. It’s a six-week, hands-on food purchasing and preparation
course where low-income families learn how to eat healthy on a budget.
Gleaners administers the program locally and is helping to expand the
program across Michigan’s Upper and Lower peninsulas. Cooking Matters
sends volunteer chefs and dieticians into communities to teach a
prescribed six-week course designed by Share Our Strength, a national organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger in America.
Results
for Cooking Matters are remarkable, with graduates showing measurable
increases in fruit, vegetable, and whole grain consumption; more
frequent reading of nutrition labels; and better meal planning. Along
with other southeast Michigan locations, Gleaners offers the class at
Head Start sites to parents of preschoolers, last year working with 10
Head Start sites in Wayne County.
The health impact of getting every parent with children ages six and under into a Cooking Matters course is compelling, with potential to reverse the trend of increasing child obesity and diabetes.
Another way children are set up for a healthy future starts at birth with breastfeeding. Breast milk contains vitamins, minerals, and disease-fighting substances, packing such a powerful punch that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of an infant’s life.
Here in Detroit, the Black Mothers’ Breastfeeding Association, led by founding executive director Kiddada Green, is working to educate new mothers and empower them to breast feed. Green says that getting mothers to breastfeed is as much about acceptance as personal choice. If mothers feel good and are welcomed around breastfeeding, they’re more likely to choose it.
“So we’re trying to make it more acceptable and doing it from a community-based approach,” says Green.
Since brain development is most sensitive to a baby’s nutrition
between mid-gestation and two years of age (Zero to Three; National
Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families), a baby’s intake is
particularly important.
Detroit is one of three U.S. communities piloting a First Food Friendly
Community Initiative. As part of the project, BMBA is surveying Osborn
residents to gage sentiments and behaviors around breastfeeding in
public. It will eventually create a curriculum and launch an educational
campaign, with community members being trained to engage businesses,
churches, and other organizations in making the city a First Food
Friendly environment.
Green is a lead consultant on the project.
“Just like it’s important to have accessible fruits and vegetables that
are available in the community…it’s also important to make sure
breastfeeding is acceptable,” she says. “If I go to the laundromat, or
I’m at a park, or I go to the grocery store and I need to breastfeed,
it’s accessible to me because it’s welcome here.”
Making good food more affordable
Along with the acceptability of breastfeeding and the accessibility of healthy food comes affordability.
Linda Campbell is an expert in food justice. She works with Gleaners’
client choice pantries in Brightmoor and the North End of Detroit,
overseeing nutrition education, cooking, gardening, and food justice
programs. Target participants are parents with children under the age of
six, and the emphasis is on healthy, whole foods.
Campbell says
that while there is a growing awareness among low-income families about
the need to cook and eat healthy, they are often very limited by cost.
“Accessibility
and affordability are getting in the way of our families being able to
eat more healthily – not the desire. They’re willing to learn new ways
to get great food and prepare it,” says CampbellCampbell sees a lot of
families with children who not only are coming to the pantry wanting to
feed healthy food to their children, but also are willing to think
differently about food. “To do that in terms of money in their pocket,
that’s the challenge. It’s an economic challenge for our families, not
an education and awareness challenge.”
With limited resources, income and inequality can define not only where a child lives, but how he eats. Young children in Detroit, a majority of whom are African American and live below the poverty line, are at particular risk.
“Because African American children zero to five are disproportionately burdened by poverty, you’re going to see those disparities show up in those households,” says Campbell. Lack of good food is often compounded by an absence of safe public parks to play outdoors or no space in the home to exercise, makes growing healthy children even harder for many Detroiters.
As Joel Berg
stated in his 2008 book, “All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?”,
obesity among low-income Americans alone should motivate us to identify
and put a stop to it. “Certainly one huge step toward addressing this
spreading obesity epidemic would be to make sure that poor Americans
around the country have better access to more affordable, nutritious
foods,” notes Berg.
Campbell, too, believes that the solution
lies in building more capacity to produce healthy, whole foods in our
communities – to scale up a food system that is locally sourced and
affordable for families.
It makes sense.
“Good food helps kids learn,” says Matts of MSU CRFS. “By introducing good, fresh, local foods to kids early in life, we may shape their eating habits and, later in life, their buying habits, so that they reach for that tasty Michigan apple, blueberry, or tomato well into the future, to benefit both their health and our farmers.”
Click here to read the original article.
This story is part of a series of solutions-focused features and profiles about the programs and people that are positively impacting the lives of Michigan kids. The series is produced by Michigan Nightlight and is made possible with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.