Fork. Spoon. Life:
Changing how kids eat.
college, Lisa Kingery moved to Japan to teach English. Most of her students were middle-age women, and they taught her to cook. Every day, they cooked, and she learned. It forever changed her.
When she finally returned to the United States, she became a public health dietitian and worked with children in schools. In 2012 she started a youth chef academy with four classrooms. She founded FoodRight and in 2014 began offering culinary nutrition and garden-based education programs under that name.
Working with Milwaukee Public Schools, and in the central city, the program has expanded; 900 kids will learn culinary skills with her this year.
Discovering food
It wasn’t until I moved to Japan after I graduated from university. Food is very central to the Japanese culture, and that was very eye-opening. I saw people being concerned with eating food in season, (from) local sources, and I saw people living long and healthy lives. You’d see 80-year-old people riding their bicycles to parks to play croquet together. I was really inspired. I need to bring this back to America.
I came back and started investigating. I knew I wanted to do something with food and healing. I first worked as a public health dietitian in New York and taught cooking in the classrooms to younger students.
Her Milwaukee move
My husband got a job in Milwaukee. I started working at the Fondy Food Center, they were newly started. I took over managing the market.
When things weren’t growing, about six to nine months out of the year in Wisconsin, I wanted to start developing culinary nutrition education for youth. We’d done a needs assessment in 2006 and there was no nutrition education anyfore where.
That said, there was this huge childhood obesity crisis in Milwaukee. There was a report that said that 37% of MPS students were overweight. That’s about twice the national average.
All about exposure
I don’t know when Americans decided to make the kid menu the junk food menu. Talk to kids, they eat the same five things: hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, mac ’n’ cheese and chicken nuggets.
When I went to Japan, kids ate what their parents ate. That happens in Japan, France, everywhere else. There’s no reason American kids are special and should be eating only hot dogs and mac ’n’ cheese. It is all about exposure. It takes up to 18 times trying a new food beAfter your taste buds adapt.
Convenience culture
In America, I feel our culture is quick convenience food. That’s our food culture. I’m not judging. Everyone is busy. Everyone is so busy, there is this whole generation of kids connected to highly processed food. Their meals come out of a microwave.
Begin with beans
One of the first recipes we started with was bean dip. I do hummus with chickpeas and a white bean dip, more of a French influence, then a black bean dip with more of a Latin American influence. A lot of times, it is the first time they’ve ever eaten a chickpea.
The one-bite rule
We all have to try one bite. You have to taste it to know if you like it.
Life lessons
I’m trying to build cooking skills. By the time you’re in fifth grade, you have the ability to prepare simple snacks and meals. By seventh grade, many of the kids in the city are in charge of preparing dinner for themselves and their siblings. They have this skill for life.
Her food heroes
All the middle-age ladies in Japan, they are my heroes. They cooked every single day no matter what. That was an inspiration for me.
The first thing she cooked
I learned how to make okonimiyaki (savory pancakes). I also learned how to make miso soup. Isn’t that weird, that’s a first thing a person from Belvidere, Illinois would learn to make?
Reason to teach
I’m always surprised when I do an assessment of kids’ diets and ask what they ate yesterday. Even in my affluent schools, there will be not one kid that had a home-cooked meal. They have fast food or frozen dishes. Some of my kids, especially in the older grades, when I ask what you ate for dinner yesterday, they say, “I didn’t eat anything.”
Making an impact
I want nothing short of changing the way Americans eat, and I’m starting with kids in Milwaukee. Fork. Spoon. Life. explores the everyday relationship that local notables (within the food community and without) have with food. To suggest future personalities to profile, email nstohs@journalsentinel.com.