FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Program helps children understand the vital links between farms, dinner plates and healthy bodies
The human body is an amazing instrument, turning plants and animals into nutrients for energy. Selecting the best sources of food is not something everyone is good at, but students at a local elementary school learned proper food choices during an exhibit last week.
Arkansas Farm to You, a traveling interactive exhibit for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, made a stop at Fouke Elementary School to teach children where their food comes from and how it moves through the body to help them stay healthy.
The 10-station exhibit is sponsored by the University of Arkansas System’s Division of Agriculture.
Carla Due with Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service said the purpose of the exhibit is to show students the correlation between growing healthy foods, eating healthy foods and preparing healthy foods.
“We want them to learn where their food comes from and then basically they follow My Plate the whole way,” she said. “We show them what the grain does for our body, what the fruits do and how calcium from the milk makes bones strong.”
The program begins at Farmer Fred’s Arkansas Plate Farm. He has dairy and beef cattle, chickens, rice, beans, fruits and vegetables, which make their way to his plate. Then, in the Healthy Cafe, students practice creating healthy meals and learn how to read nutrition labels on food packages.
The journey to learn the functions of the body’s organs and how they process food begins in the mouth. Students walk into a red, tent-like structure with an opening surrounded by white teeth. A pink tongue lies on the floor at the entrance. They pass through the “stomach” and “intestines,” and at the end, they learn about the skin and how important it is to wash their hands and use sunscreen to protect their bodies.
Melisa Plunk teaches nutrition education to Fouke students nearly every day and said the exhibit goes along with the lessons she’s created to help them learn about proper health.
“I teach them about My Plate and where food comes from and all this just goes along right with that,” she said. Plunk works through the extension service and teaches the SNAP program, which stands for Smart Nutrition Active People.
She said the program has helped students make better food choices.
“We also have parents talking about that their kids will try things now,” she said. “These kids will eat all kinds of vegetables and fruits and things like that. They’re excited their kids are eating healthy foods.”
Angie Stewart, statewide coordinator for Farm to You, takes the program all over the state. She said last year they saw about 18,000 students.
“Maybe not so much here in Fouke, but in a lot of schools, kids and even their parents are so far removed from the farms. Used to, generationally, at least a grandparent would have worked on a farm, but it’s getting to where even grandparents or great-grandparents didn’t live on a farm,” she said. “Kids today are getting more and more detached about where their food comes from, so that’s why we want them to be able to learn where their food comes from. Also, with … childhood obesity becoming such an epidemic in Arkansas, we just want them to know how the foods they eat affect their health overall, how it affects their bones, their muscles, their teeth and even their skin.”
For more information on the Farm to You program, go to uaex.edu.