New kind of service
Church partners with clinic for healthy eating initiative.
An Oklahoma City church has teamed up with a faithbased medical clinic for a healthy eating initiative designed to improve the lives of clinic patients.
Life. Church Broadway and Britton, 9001 N Broadway Extension, is partnering with Good Shepherd Ministries to provide monthly nutrition classes at the Good Shepherd Clinic, 222 NW 12.
Pam Timmons, Good Shepherd’s executive director, said the goal of the classes, launched in March, is to help clinic patients learn healthy eating habits to improve their overall health. She said she hopes the new class helps to increase the life expectancy of patients and their families by lowering their risk of chronic health problems related to diet.
“The main concern for low-income families is often how to ensure they are not hungry at night,” Timmons said. “They gravitate to foods that fill them up, which are typically high in fat and sugar because they consider foods with vitamins and minerals to be a luxury.”
During a recent class, local chef Jay Jarvis, a community leader at Life. Church Broadway and Britton, taught a group of about 10 people how to cut up a chicken to serve numerous people and how to prepare the meat in a hearthealthy way.
Timmons said Jarvis was one of the Life. Church volunteers who had started serving at Good Shepherd with a group from the church, before he decided he could utilize his cooking skills to launch a healthy eating program there. Jarvis, founder of Platez2Go Catering, said he learned to cook food in a healthy manner after being diagnosed with kidney failure and undergoing two kidney transplants.
He told the group gathered that he learned how to use healthy seasonings, how to shop in a cost-effective way and how to read food labels to learn which items were the healthiest.
Jarvis said his role at his church is to help get people connected to the community, and the nutrition class served as another way to do just that.
As Jarvis boiled a chicken, then pan seared the meat, he kept up a lively conversation with attendees. The chef said the way he cooked the meat was an alternative to
“ONE thing I BELIEVE about food is: It is the great duct-tape of the world.”
to frying it, which is a popular way to prepare it but not necessarily a healthy option.
Jarvis said a good meal is one of the best ways to bring people together, and it can be a healthy meal with the right adjustments. “One thing I believe about food is: It is the great duct-tape of the world,” he said.
Manuela Parvin, who brought her granddaughters, Abbie and Leslie Morris, said she enjoyed the class, and the young girls seemed to enjoy it, too.
Abbie Morris, 8, whom Jarvis made a “junior chef” for the day, volunteered to help him as he cooked the chicken and prepared a cucumber salad with a vinaigrette to go with it.
Once Jarvis and his young helper had finished preparing the chicken and salad, class attendees were able to sample the food and express their enjoyment of it.
While they ate, they listened to Jarvis’ colleague as she discussed ways to use coupons to save money on groceries.
Serving others
Chad Classen, Life Groups and Missions pastor for Life. Church Broadway and Britton, said the initiative is one of the ways Life. Church hopes to partner with Good Shepherd.
He said the nutrition class was designed to help the clinic’s patients but also allowed Jarvis to serve others.
Life. Church, Classen said, encourages church members to be “spiritual servers” rather than “spiritual consumers” by getting outside the walls of the church to serve others in the community-at-large.
“Our approach to missions is several things — protecting the vulnerable, providing support for those in crisis and helping people come out of poverty,” Classen said.
Meanwhile, Timmons said the new nutrition class is a timely addition to the services provided by Good Shepherd, which provides medical and dental care to the uninsured in the Oklahoma City metro-area community.
Timmons said Oklahomans face a number of diet-related chronic health problems such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
She said eating more fruits and vegetables has been proven to lower the risk for major chronic health problems like heart disease, diabetes, many cancers and high blood pressure.
However, Timmons said according to the United Health Foundation, Oklahoma ranks 46 among all states for overall health and is near the bottom for fruit and vegetable consumption.