New Haven Independent

On Wednesday the Columbus Family Academy fifth- and sixth-graders (pictured) and their friends were celebrating a $10,000 nutrition grant their school recently won. The grant’s centerpiece will be a fresh vegetable bar right in their school cafeteria serving local produce, likely supplied by Fair Haven’s CitySeed-sponsored green market. It will be the first fresh vegetable bar among the K-8 schools in the NHPS system.

“It’s all part of our ongoing effort,” said Sue Peters, “to change the culture of our schools to healthier eating and living, and it really began about four years ago when we banned junk food from the schools’ vending machines.”

(Click here and here to read two other stories about similar efforts in New Haven schools.)

Columbus Principal Abie Benitez added proudly, “Do you know that our Parent Teacher Organization recently voted to have at their meetings only water or fresh juices? No more soda!”

It’s just those kinds of incremental changes that have the NHPS’s Wellness Committee, which Peters chairs along with Sue Weisselberg, the schools construction coordinator, excited enough to show what energy vegetables can provide.

The grant will also support workshops and “cookoffs” so parents can learn healthy nutrition practices, support for T-shirts and contests promoting good eating, and the incorporation of these activities in the school’s dual-language, science intensive curriculum.

All that’s going to be happening in the school’s gleaming glass and brick new building rising at the corner of Blatchley and Grand (behind Peters and Weisselberg), and in front of which a representative group of vegetable and fruit tasters gathered beneath a bright sun.

ania DeJesus said that she often eats fresh fruits in salads that her mom prepared at home. “It’s good that I can now have that at school too,” she said.

Benitez described the vegetables that the kids were going to have Wednesday, as part of their usual fare, as pre-packaged lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots. “But they rarely encounter a sugar snap pea or a turnip.”

Fifth-grader Anaysha Hernandez proved her point as she stood in front of the vegetable array, which was laid out by CitySeed’s Elliott Brennan and Elise Cusano. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to a radish-sized white item with a long green stem.

“It’s a sweet turnip,” said Cusano. “Try it. Tell me what you think.”

Anaysha tried one and chewed thoughtfully. “Mmmm. It tastes like …”

“Like what?” asked Cusano.

Eventually Anaysha’s friend Tania said, “It kind of tastes like onions, but maybe also lettuce.”

“There’s a lot of water in it,” added Jazmarie.

Frankly it’s as hard to describe the taste of vegetables as wine, and one of the kids did an excellent job. She was overheard to offer a perfect synesthesia: “They taste like ‘crunchy water’.”

Such adventures in fresh food are being made possible by Columbus’s winning of the grant through Hidden Valley Salad Dressing company’s nationwide “Love Your Veggies Nationwide School Lunch Campaign.” Peters said one grant was given to a school in each state; hundreds applied from Connecticut.

“Columbus’ was granted,” she said, “because there was real need in the school for staff to promote healthy eating and lifestyle, and the proximity of CitySeed’s green market and other community connections being so strong.”

The grant will provide support likely for a Latino parent to coordinate activities with families, to participate with CitySeed in developing a community cookbook, staging vegetable tastings, cooking demonstrations, chili cookoffs, and in general enhancing the food and science culture of the school.

“We’re really proud already,” said Tania DeJesus, “that we’re going to be the first elementary school in the city with a salad bar.”

Principal Benitez said the changes would not be only extra curricular. “We are a science-themed school, infusing our second-language curriculum with science and math. Wherever possible, when the kids, for example, study ecosystems, we will incorporate the activities of the grant.”

Nutrition, science, all of these related activities, she said, will help the kids as they grow up. “When I look at a child,” she said, thoughtfully as she mused with Peters and Weisselberg, as the students lined up to return to school, on why kids love the little bite-size carrots but do not like cooked vegetables (the baby carrots make a snap when you eat them, the cooked are soggy and silent), “I see a future adult, a bread-winner, and I ask what kinds of activities will open doors for them in the future. And this is surely one.”