Welcome to my blog

Here begins the chronicles of my journey through a masters degree in Health Education and Active Living. A testament to my own pursuits of health and wellness and my endeavors to engage individuals and communities in re-framing the way we understand health and health education.

And then sometimes life takes you on a very different course of events!

I know it's been awhile, but my blogging was interrupted by a move across the world to Australia. Despite being more than a little disruptive to my career, schooling, and view of health; my move down under has provided me with an abundance of new challenges and exciting journeys in Health, Health Education, & Public Health. So on that note, I'll pick back up my blogging torch and fuel on.

Tuesday, 22 November 2011

"Pumpkin Soup"


This year in an effort to bring what I value into my teaching to share with my students, I decided to try the Food Explorers program with my class. Food Explorers is a program that aims to introduce students to nutritious foods and involve then in discussion, planning, preparing, and eating of them. My school is already apart of the BC School Fruit and Vegetable Nutritional Program and my students are routinely introduced to new and healthy foods. But they are often very reluctant to try them, or have already decided they won’t like it before taking a bite. I like the premise behind the Food Explorer program as it lets students take more ownership of the healthy foods they eat. After learning about, making connections with, and sharing their experiences with the chosen food, they choose as a class from the recipes provided a way to try the new food. I hoped that the act of choosing, preparing, and cooking a new food would create a far greater incentive for a child to try something unfamiliar and outside their comfort zone.


After our pumpkin patch trip I thought it might be a great opportunity to introduce squash. I stumbled across a book in my school library called Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. It is about a cat, duck, and squirrel who love to eat pumpkin soup. One day they weren’t able to find a ripe pumpkin. They decided to try other new soups but every new adventure ended with the duck saying “Yuck!” and refusing to try something new. While reading this story to my class they loved yelling yuck along with the duck. It also opened up a great conversation with my students about trying foods before deciding we don’t like them. One of my students said, “that duck has a bad attitude” and all the other children agreed. After each yuck, they repeated “that’s a bad attitude” and scolded the naughty duck. I stopped the story and asked how the duck could have a good attitude towards the soup his friends made. One of them suggested, “he should try a little bit first”.


This was a great teachable moment because whenever my class is trying a new fruit or vegetable I always tell them “even if we don’t think we like it, we try a little bite. It’s ok not to like it, but it’s not ok not to try.” This coupled with the positive effects of peer pressure (everyone else around them is trying the new food) all of my students this year are taking at least tiny bites of the food offered, which is a big step. Studies have shown it can take over 20 exposures to a new food for someone to develop a liking for it, so even a small exposure is a big step in the right direction.


At the end of the book the squirrel decides to trick the duck by making a soup that looks like pumpkin soup. He cooks squash, carrots, corn, and tomatoes together and produces a soup that is the exact colour of pumpkin. The duck tries it and exclaims, “That’s not pumpkin! But it’s the best soup I’ve ever tasted!” And my class cheered for the duck and his delicious new soup. I asked my class if they would like to try making the delicious soup that squirrel made. I received an unanimous “yes!” and I told them that tomorrow we would make the soup in class. We talked about the fact that some of them might not think they like pumpkin soup, and that’s ok, but do we want to be like the duck who says yuck? Everyone agreed we did not want to be like the duck who said yuck and that we would all try at least one little bite.


The next day I came to school armed with my slow cooker, emersion blender, and the ingredients for making “pumpkin soup”. I chopped and my students helped me to put the ingredients into the slow cooker and stir the soup. I turned the slow cooker on high and hoped that it would be ready by the end of the day. It was not (a teachable moment for the teacher about testing things out before the lesson). So we let it cook over night and by the next day our classroom smelled of delicious soup. All day my students spoke of how excited they were to try the soup. When it finally came time I served each child a bowl and asked them “are we going to be the duck that said yuck?” They all said "no" and every single child tried a bite of the soup. Not everyone liked it, but they all tried it and took pride in their efforts and bravery. Their efforts of choosing, preparing, and talking about the soup made trying the new food an enjoyable experience, even if the end result was them deciding “it wasn’t their favorite” (which is what we say in the classroom instead of “I don’t like it”).


I really like the Food Explorer Program and the concepts it embodies. Involving my students in food choice and preparation is changing they way they interact with food and their willingness to try new foods. Food can empower, engage, and surprise. It has become a great learning tool in my classroom. Next  on the menu, beans. We can’t wait!

Links:

Food Explorer Program

BC Fruit and Vegetable Nutritional Program

Pumpkin Soup, by Helen Cooper

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

My Own Skin


The fall semester is rapidly coming to a close and I’m beginning to think that the expression “I have a lot on my plate” is the perfect metaphor for me. I’ve begun to feel that my life is little more than a routine of work, gym, and schoolwork with some healthy meals interspersed throughout the day. In recognition of health being a holistic view of self, I decided it was time to make some much needed personal time and do something I’ve felt I hadn’t had time for in months. I decided to invest in some self-love and get my haircut. While waiting for my appointment I opened up the nearest magazine titled “meatpaper”, which seemed like an odd choice for someone that doesn’t eat meat, but I have to say I was intrigued. As I perused the pages I came across a stunning photograph of pigs standing in packed pens with an anomaly in the middle, a bowed naked human back amidst hundreds of sows. At first I thought it must be about empathy and feeling for an animal so close to humans in many ways, but playing slave to our cultures obsession with eating meat. But as I delved into the article it seemed to centre around the idea of skin and how it creates our perceptions of our world. Just then I was pulled away for my appointment but I glanced down at the name of the photographer, Miru Kim, and mentally filled it away thinking I might want to know more about it later.

Two days later I was still thinking about the article and the photographs so I googled the photographers name and came upon her web page with a write up about her exhibition entitled “The Pig That Therefore I am”, a retort to Renee Descartes statement “I think, therefore I am who in the spirit of disassociating the body from the soul, viewed animals as simply “automata or moving machines.”  In essence it almost seemed like a photographic summary of the learning and discussion happening in our Masters cohort. Discovering anew the mind body connection and witnessing and striking parallels between training horses and teaching children I look upon these photographs as a testament to the oneness of body and mind and a holistic vision of health and how we view ourselves and our world.

Miru does not stop there, she takes her work down to the most basic way humans and animals experience their world and bodies, through our skin. She passionately quotes Michel Serres; "The skin, a single tissue with localized concentrations, displays sensitivity. It shivers, expresses, breathes, listens, loves, and lets itself to be loved, receives, refuses, retreats, its hair stands on the end with horror, it is covered with fissures, rashes, and the wounds of the soul." Miru’s work speaks to the shared experience of humans and pigs through skin, but it is her focus on skin itself that I find most powerful about her work. It makes me think of how I experience my own skin and in turn how others perceive it.
How are my experiences in my skin shaped by how I feel about it? If I worry so much about the shape, colour, scars, dimples, or other imperfections how does this change my lived experience and my connection between my senses and my perceptions? If skin is a defining medium for the internal consciousness of the body how do negative perceptions of ones skin interfere with life and health as lived experience?
Miru concludes with the thought, “Nevertheless, at some point in our lives, we must experience the emblematic process of flaying our skin and offering it up for others to see, hear, and feel through art, music, and poetry.” I add teaching to this as well. If we teach authentically we offer up our selves, our perceptions of the world, and our wisdom and experiences learned through our senses. This is shared with those we teach everyday through our voices, our touch, and our appearance. As my term paper continues to unfold in front of me and I think of my perceptions of myself and my own skin, and the perceptions of those I educate I begin to better appreciate and value the idea of my skin as my perfect connection between mind and body, not something that needs to be bettered or changed.
This idea of health as a holistic entity is not something that comes easy for me, or that I see in many of my daily health practices. But I believe there is power in this idea of re approaching health from a humble beginning instead of as a veteran of physical fitness and healthy eating. Humbly I go.

Sunday, 13 November 2011

Café Scientifique presents: Big Food Companies: Friend or Foe in the Fight Against Obesity and Chronic Disease


After reading the link posted on our blog and some PR from Rosie who had attended the previous seminar I attended SFU’s Café Scientifique this past Wednesday. The topic was Big Food Companies: Friend or Foe in the Fight Against Obesity and Chronic Disease? It is held at Surrey Central Brewing, which was a very welcome change from the stark SFU classrooms. The way Café Scientifique works is that there is a presenter or two who present a topic for discussion, alongside a mediator who opens, closes, and sometimes rebuts or adds fodder to the discussion. After about half an hour of the presenters and moderator speaking the microphone is given to the floor and all in attendance are able to ask questions, create dialogue, and comment on what is happening in the discussion.

I greatly enjoyed the interactive style of the Café and the topic was of great interest to me. The first presenter was Dr. Diane Finegood, an SFU professor in the Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology department who work with the Chronic Disease Systems Modeling Lab. The second presenter works for the BCRFA (British Columbia Restaurant and Foodservices Association, whose name I did not catch. The moderator (another name and title I missed) started off the discussion by likening Big Food to Cigarette Companies and placing the blame for our society’s current struggle with obesity and chronic disease squarely in their hands. Dr. Finegood’s presentation shifted the blame from big food and onto the individual. She believes that obesity and chronic disease are far to complex an issue to hold any one entity culpable. The representative from the BCRFA spent his time going over challenges faced by the food and beverage industry in providing healthy choices (lack of demand, taste profiles, small or independent suppliers) and all the ways that big food are working towards making food healthier (labeling and health information initiatives) and restriction of trans fat used in foods by its members to name a few.

I will be the first to admit that I came to this session already with the mindset of big food being the bad guy. After reading many books on the topic, such as “Food Politics” by Marion Nestle, “The End of Overeating” by David Kessler, and “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan, it becomes readily apparent that big food is big business, and the bottom line will always be money before health. That being said I did come away with some new ideas or food for thought.

Dr. Finegood presented as interesting view on some of the greater effects of the prevalence of big food in our culture’s day to day life. Not only is consuming more and more convenience foods or foods outside the home making our society ever more prone to obesity and chronic disease, it is also contributing to a “deskilling of peoples behavior” when it comes to cooking and food preparation. Big food is food that is researched, engineered, and marketed to be as hyperpalatable as possible to the consumer. Studies have shown these designer foods to be highly mentally and physically addictive, and considering the millions of dollars that going into new food creation there must be validity to this argument. Dr. Finegood’s deskilling comment made me think about how addictive the idea of not cooking or preparing food must also be for the consumer. This deskilling through the big foods capitalization on value added foods from tv dinners to pre chopped vegetables creates a of skill based dependence in already vulnerable populations. The less people know about cooking and preparing foods the less chance that they will cook and prepare their own foods. Big food is creating multi faceted dependencies and leaving consumers with fewer and fewer abilities to make different choices.

The BCRFA representative really worked hard to put a positive spin on all aspect of out of the home food, big or small. Many of the initiatives he spoke of were positive, but it is always easier to talk of things that could or might be happening that what are current practices. When I asked him how criteria for food labeling and nutritional information would be set he did everything he could to avoid my question and make the response more positive. I don’t blame him; food labeling is a hot topic right now. Front of package labeling has been getting a lot of media attention in the United States currently as the FDA attempts to create and police the labeling of food. While more readily available information about the food we eat might seem like a great idea, unfortunately it is often used by big food to promote the good qualities and often un or sub substantiated benefits of their products while masking the undesirable information. For example, it’s great that a product has whole grains, is organic, or has anti oxidants, but if the first ingredient it sugar and it contains trans fats no amount anti oxidants or organic ingredients will make it a health food. This was my concern about food labeling in British Columbia, but it went unaddressed during the response from the BCRFA speaker. I was also wary of many of the statistics he was using. His association uses largely survey based information to determine their policies and procedures, which is challenging because people often misjudge or are unaware of what they are eating. When he told the group that the average person ate food from outside the home less than twice a week, I really stopped to question the validity of the information. I don’t know if I can think of anyone, myself included, who doesn’t grab a coffee from a coffee shop, stop for some lunch, go out for dinner with a friend, order takeout, or pick up a pre made dinner more than once a week. That statistic seems quite inadequate to account for the amount of money made by the food and beverage industry and the resulting health fall out in our society.

One of his points I did find very valid, however, was that there are not a lot of people asking for healthier options, or that are happy to sacrifice portion, price point, or taste in exchange for a healthier meal. If this is the case, (which I suspect it is) then why would Big Food be supplying it? Even myself, who often wishes there were more healthy options, may be part of the problem because instead of asking big food to make changes, I simply avoid eating at or from establishments who don’t already make the food I like to eat and then complain that they aren’t doing enough. If we want big food to change, we need to take some onus and demand for it. This includes asking more of big food and asking our government to put more controls in place. Big food is about bottom dollar, and what people want is where the money is, the challenge lies in making people want and ask for healthier foods.

All in all I greatly enjoyed the evening and appreciate the chance to discuss and think about food and health in new ways. I think this series Café Scientifique is presenting is doing a great job of getting people interested in health and making peoples feel as if they have a voice when it comes matters that effect us personally, locally, and globally. Just a little food for thought.

Monday, 7 November 2011

New Focus

The end of the semester is arriving at an unbelievable pace and as due dates loom I find myself spending more and more of my waking hours thinking about my final paper. Not in a dreading “I don’t want to write this paper” sort of way, but in a “my mind won’t let this idea slip far from my consciousness sort of way”.  This is how I know I’ve chosen the right topic to write about.

The intention for the assignment is that this paper develops from a first person narrative and my recent parent orientation presentation leapt to my mind. During my orientation session for the parents of my new kindergarteners I belabored the nutrition portion of my presentation in hopes that I would positively influence my students eating habits throughout the year. After the session parent and child interview with each individual family and it soon became clear that my nutritious lunch spiel had missed the mark. After having tense, worried, and obstinate conversations with many of the parents about food I began to think that my attempt making healthy eating a focus at school might have done more harm than good.

After typing out the narrative I thought the focus for my paper was clear, why was food shopping, choice, and preparation, and feeding children such a struggle for many young families and how the social determinants of food security play into it. I was curious to look into how much influence children had over their food and the factors that influenced them. But as I started researching and thinking more about myself and my own health practices I began to wonder if what I was pulling out of the narrative was really the most telling force in my interaction with the parents.

After continued feedback about my paper and much soul searching about my own beliefs, conceptions, and insecurities related to eating and nutrition I decided to take a leap of faith and take on a topic far more personal, which while hard to admit gave me a far amount of trepidation.

I’ve instead decided to write instead of how my own fears, convictions, and practices in regards to eating and food create barriers between myself and those I speak with. When I look back at my presentation I find myself more focused on how the parents perceived what I said, how I said it, and what was left unsaid. I find myself wondering now who was judging who more. Was I overly judgmental when I assumed that they needed to be told how to feed their children, that they could afford the sort of foods I was suggesting, or that they must not know how to eat themselves due to their own physical appearance? Or did my words serve to make it easier for them to judge me as a young know it all teacher without picky eaters to contend with, time, money, and energy with which to allow nutrition to be a focus in my life, and an appearance that would suggest I equate nutrition with a certain body image.

It’s hard to admit to myself how much my concern over food can be a negative factor in my life and how the idealism I strive for could be the greatest barrier between being someone who could affect positive change in my students, which was the entire intention of the nutrition talk in the first place.

I want to know how best to break down barriers between others and myself. What are my intentions when I engage others in conversations of health and how can I remain authentic, yet helpful and nonjudgmental. How can I work to mitigate barriers between myself and others when it may be a barrier created by age, appearance, or vitality?

For the most part, I seem to have found many, many more questions than answers, but learning is a journey and this is not something I will be able to reconcile to myself in 3 months of thought and 15 pages of text. I know it will be an ongoing dialogue with myself and will shape my practice in the classroom. But that is the most exciting part of this discourse, because no matter what conclusion I come to, I will have to give a parent orientation presentation next September and while I don’t know now what I will say, I know it won’t be a regurgitation of this year’s. And that is what I truly believe is at the heart of meaningful pedagogy, constant re-evaluation of current practices, beliefs, and biases, and the willingness and acceptance of the need for change and growth.