On a recent Wednesday morning, chef Jennifer Brown stared down two posters on a whiteboard and began the work of introducing MyPlate, the new USDA nutritional icon, to Mrs. Johnson’s first-grade class.
“Let’s play a game of what’s different and what’s the same,” said Brown, or “Ms. Chef Jenny” as she’s known to the crowd at Bradoaks Elementary School in Monrovia.
“The stripes are gone!” one first-grader shouted with relish, pointing to the now retired MyPyramid.
He was right. The revamped food pyramid introduced by the USDA in 2005 is long gone and with it goes those tricky stripes used to convey recommended daily amounts of each food group – a design choice deemed confusing and vague by nutritional critics from the beginning.
But the USDA kept it simple when it introduced the dinner plate design in June. Half of MyPlate is filled with fruits and vegetables, with the other half is devoted to protein and grains. Perched to the right is a small circle for dairy, hinting at a glass of milk (of the fat free or one percent variety, if you’re following the USDA’s dietary guidelines).
As a teaching tool, MyPlate simply makes more sense, said Brown, who’s taught nutritional and cooking lessons in the Monrovia School District since 2006.
“With MyPyramid, it was easy to see how a kid could look at it and think, `Well, how do I apply to that to what I eat?”‘ said the Le Cordon Bleu-educated Brown. “It was even hard for adults to understand. Now, it’s easy to see the emphasis on fruits and veggies.”
To help visualize the changes to the class, Brown held up photos of cereal and milk. It was her breakfast, she told the students, and although it was yummy, she easily could haves struck a healthy balance had she added some banana slices or a glass of 100 percent orange juice.
Then the kids had their turn, each table playing detective with photos of meal. Brown asked if each had a fruit or veggie. When the plate of bok choy and veggie stir fry had its turn, hands rocketed up across the classroom, a heavy endorsement if there ever was one.
The introduction to MyPlate came by way of the district’s Network for a Healthy California program. Federally funded by the USDA and funneled through CalFresh, a low income assistance program, the Network makes use of national and state health education content standards to encourage healthy diets and daily exercise in Monrovia and other school districts.
Through the Network, Monrovians in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade have learned how to read nutrition facts label and why to stave off sugary strawberry milk. In middle school classrooms, they’ve picked up tips on how to dodge peer pressure toward an unhealthy diet.
But the cornerstone of the program is the cooking-in-the-classroom lessons, which Brown and other trained staff teach every month. Making use of the Network’s Harvest of the Month, the cooking demonstrations have successfully introduced the kids’ picky palates to jicama, cabbage and even radishes. The recipes are demonstrated again at parent workshops and the featured produce makes its way onto the cafeteria calendar.
Registered dietician Lizett Olivares has been with the Network since 2004, serving as assistant project coordinator for both the Monrovia and Baldwin Park school districts. Like she hopes to see with MyPlate, the Network has become a valuable tool in combating the growing obesity problem among schoolchildren, she said.
“Kids are a high risk population and the Network has long encouraged incorporating fruits and vegetables into their diets,” she said. “We really want to reach out and help students establish healthy habits. It becomes a part of their school culture.”
For Bradoaks principal Valerie Bires, the proof of that effort sits right on the students’ plates.
“It’s really changed the way the kids are eating,” she said. “At lunchtime, I’ll watch them load up their trays with fruits and vegetables. Five years ago, they wouldn’t think of touching either.”
