Mission: Food Possible empowers schools to eat healthier
Published:Monday | October 17, 2022 | 12:06 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
TWENTY-FIVE canteen operators and school administrators from five schools in Westmoreland are being empowered to cook healthier meals for the 2,300 students they oversee, thanks to a three-day training course in food preparation organised by the Mission: Food Possible non-profit organisation.
The training course, which started on Thursday, October 13, and ended on Saturday, October 15, saw the participants gathering at Sheffield Primary School in Westmoreland to learn new ways of preparing food items such as breadfruit, dasheen, plantains, and other ground provisions as healthy alternatives for students’ school lunches.
The participating schools included the Sheffield, Little London, Paul Island, and Esher primary schools, and the Mt Airy All-Age School.
Maxine Russell, grade-one teacher and 4H Club leader at Mt Airy All-Age School, described the training exercise, which included practical kitchen instruction from Mission: Food Possible’s veteran Chef Patrice Harris, as an eye-opening experience for her.
FANCY DISHES
“The thing is that we get to use our local produce to prepare fancy dishes, not the regular stuff that we are used to, such as boiling dasheen; but we can use it to make punches and so on, which I did not know about. It is wonderful to hear people come up with all these fantastic recipes, and I am definitely going to be using these in my 4H Club,” Russell told The Gleaner.
Ricardo Brown, the principal of Paul Island Primary School, likewise voiced appreciation for the chance to learn about the global issue of food insecurity and how the problem can be addressed locally through the use of Jamaica’s familiar staple foods.
“The programme is good, in my opinion, because it has enlightened me as to what food insecurity is all about. We have so many things all around us, and yet we have always been told that people do not have anything to eat. So this course is to enlighten us on the things we have around us and which we are literally throwing away,” said Brown.
The training programme is being held for the third time since Mission: Food Possible was founded in 2017. It was previously held in St Catherine in 2018 and Portland in 2019, only being put on hold in 2020 and 2021 due to the global COVID-19 outbreak.
Sponsorship for Mission: Food Possible’s Westmoreland training was provided by several organisations to include WATA, Tastee Limited, Hi-Pro, the University of Technology, and the Negril Beach Club.
Peter Ivey, the founder of Mission: Food Possible and a trained chef and food security activist, told The Gleaner that Jamaica has great potential for food provision.
“The way my country eats can literally save the world. We are a very lucky place with lots in abundance, and Jamaica does not have a shortage of food, because when I look at the landscape, I see food where people would see trees or bushes,” Ivey said.
REINTRODUCTION TO CROPS
“The goal is that when you go into the kitchen to cook for our children, you are able to reintroduce them to the crops that nowadays they do not want to eat or that they do not find fun. They more likely want to eat fried chicken and that kind of stuff,” Ivey added.
“We need to change the mind-set of our young people who are falling in love with this fast food and fried food mentality and straying away from the food we know is good for us. We cannot change the mind-set of people if we do not start from when they are young,” Ivey said.
Meanwhile, Chef Patrice Harris, who has been a chef for 15 years and has been with Mission: Food Possible since 2018, admitted that the long-held notions Jamaicans have about ground provisions can prove a challenge to introducing new recipe ideas with those same foodstuffs.
“It is something that can be difficult because of lack of knowledge and because of our culture, where we are only used to boiling ground provisions. For example, growing up with plantain, we just fry or make porridge with it, but we can also use it to make plantain flour, plantain pasta, fritters and other things,” explained Harris. “So it is about using the knowledge, changing the mindset, and allowing people to tap into the unused knowledge that we have.”