Real Food for Kids Food Day Event Brings Color and Life to a Long-Overdue Issue: Real Food in Schools

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Good day, Gut Checkers!

Great news to share: last week’s National Food Day/Real Food for Kids event at Wolftrap Elementary School Fairfax was a rainbow of success! Unfortunately, I wasn’t there to experience it first-hand, but today I’m gladly sharing a wonderful report on behalf of Kathryn Luwis of Real Food for Kids. (Photographs by Laura Goyer)

“We are a nation of increasingly overweight people with unhealthy diets that lead to serious illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.  We don’t eat enough of nature’s colorful fruits and vegetables.  The good news?   It turns out that somewhere over the rainbow, there are schoolchildren actually excited to learn about and enjoy ‘real’ food.

On national Food Day, October 24, 250 children were running around in rainbow colored t-shirts that said: ‘Get Real!’ The t-shirts were handed out by Real Food For Kids, a grass-roots organization of concerned Fairfax County parents and community members, who hosted the countywide event in an effort to highlight the need for change in school food.  The day was a huge success, with upwards of 400 people in attendance, including parents, members of the school board, school board candidates and the press.  The community pulled together to send a message regarding school food and to educate children by providing them with wholesome food and fun.

Nationally-known chefs Ann Cooper, a.k.a. The Renegade Lunch Lady, and David Guas, of Bayou Bakery, Coffee Bar and Eatery, led an interactive food demonstration, with both chefs engaging the schoolchildren with questions about seasonal fruits and vegetables. The fun demonstration culminated in the making of enormous salads, tossed in kiddy-sized pools using child-sized rakes and shovels. The produce had been harvested by many of the children present just the day before at Maple Avenue Farm, a local organic farm run by Chris Guerre, who donated all of the produce. Many of the children had never seen a radish and were delighted to see the many colors they come in. For some children, it was the first salad they’d ever eaten. This exposure to whole, real foods is exactly what Real Food For Kids set out to offer.

After the demonstration, the children quickly made their way to the psychedelic M.A.X. (Maple Avenue Express) food truck, manned by chef and owner Tim Ma, of Maple Avenue Restaurant.  Beef sliders, made with 100 percent grass fed beef, were served on whole wheat buns and dressed with local, organic ketchup sweetened with agave–instead of high-fructose corn syrup.  Just for fun, the chefs also made an enormous burger to be shared by many.  In support of the cause, Whole Foods Market  provided crocks of butternut squash soup along with bushels of honey-crisp apples that were quickly devoured.  Children climbed aboard a 1957 farm tractor and, ironically, ate as children in 1957 did–whole foods rather than the highly processed, preserved and high sugar diet of today.

For Real Food For Kids organizers it was an idyllic fall day: hundreds of children clad in rainbow-colored shirts moving through space eating apples, greens and grass-fed beef.  Ready to continue full-steam ahead with their initiative, the group is bolstered and encouraged by the response to their event.  ‘It’s amazing how many parents have called and e-mailed me to find out how they can help,’ says Hammermaster.   At the close of the day as chefs, farmers and volunteers packed up their wares, a light sun shower sprayed the grounds of the event.  ‘Look up in the sky!  There’s a rainbow!’  Perhaps their goal is a lofty one, but seemingly divinely inspired.”

Great thanks to Kathryn Luwis and Laura Goyer for sharing about such an inspiring day. Though National Food Day has passed, Real Food for Kids continues to move closer toward its goal to improve children’s health in Fairfax County schools.

-Julia Harbo

Tags: Ann Cooper, Bayou Bakery, children, chris guerre, david guas, Fairfax County, Gut Check, health, joanne hammermaster, julia harbo, kathryn luwis, kids, laura goyer, M.A.X., maple avenue farm, Maple Avenue Restaurant, national food day, Northern Virginia, Northern Virginia Magazine, NoVA, real food for kids, Whole Foods, wolftrap elementary school