Summer Intern reflections: Learning to Love Fruits and Veggies
Fletcher Morris has served as our Small Bites Adventure Club intern this summer. He is a sophamore at Georgia Tech and majoring in Public Policy.
Growing up in a household where eating healthy was important has helped me to understand what a healthy diet looks like. I know that eating a fruit and veggie at every meal, if possible, is beneficial to overall health, but rarely was I enjoying the fruits and veggies I got for myself. Not enjoying how I prepared certain healthy foods has made it harder to stick to a regimented nutritious diet, but recently I have found new ways to enjoy good food that is also healthy. Working with Small Bites over the past few weeks has given me a lot of exposure to healthy classes and tasty recipes, and it has expanded my horizons for what healthy food can be.
Our recent event at the Battery Atlanta is just one of the recent examples that has shown me ways to explore eating fruits and veggies while also enjoying them. At this event just outside the Braves Stadium, we taught a class of kids how to make a Chunky Salsa Fresca. All the kids enjoyed the activity, and most even liked the salsa dip they made for themselves. After making some ourselves, I realized I also really enjoyed the activity and eating the healthy, fresh salsa. I had never had salsa so fresh, or even made my own salsa, so the whole activity was a positive experience for me and showed me that on top of enjoying healthy food, I could enjoy making the food too.
The event at the Battery has also contributed to a greater narrative I have learned about the nutrition system in our country: if you give kids a healthy outlet to enjoy food, they will learn to love it. Pairing my major studies of Public Policy at Georgia Tech with my observations at classes and farmers markets, I have been able to see a bigger problem in the overall public health system. Kids enjoying eating healthy can lead to healthier lifestyles down the road, but if schools and organizations are not investing in these healthy programs, kids will continue to avoid the healthy foods they see as ‘yucky’ or ‘gross.’ Policy has done a lot of good so far to make healthy food available to kids and families, but not enough has been done to show kids they can love healthy foods as much as they love some of their favorite snack foods. Changing the way kids look at food will not only help them learn and enjoy healthy diets, but it can also begin to counter the rate of growing medical problems that stem from unhealthy lifestyles. Healthier kids can lead to a healthier America, so more must be done to help kids realize their love for fruits and veggies.