Developing the Navajo Nation’s Future Healthy Eating Leaders
A project on the Navajo Nation to turn students attending the Preparatory School in Farmington, New Mexico into not only future college graduates but also future food leaders is making great strides.
Merrissa Johnson of the nonprofit organization Capacity Builders, which works to support the development needs of tribes, says that school officials and students are engaged in an effort to boost whole health at the school. “The students are away from their families and they need support,” says Johnson. “We want them to feel physically and mentally well, and so we are teaching them the skills to take care of themselves.”
Central to those skills is dorm wellness and healthy eating. The project’s focus includes stress management and teaching students how to cook healthy food and snacks in the dorms’ kitchenettes. To assist in that effort, the project is working with the school to purchase better electronics for the kitchenettes such as hot plates and table-top ovens.
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“We want to take the paradigm away of making easy meals, meals of convenience.”
Following the school’s existing educational model of incorporating Navajo culture and history into the curriculum, the student health project is engaged in multiple activities rooted in traditional Navajo foods. They are working with parents to teach them how to pack a weekly indigenous lunch. School meals are becoming more plant based and include foods such as three sisters’ salad – a traditional-based meal – blue corn mush, and traditional non-deep-fried fry
...College students are the next generation of food consumers just starting to purchase and prepare their own food, setting purchasing habits that will follow them into their lives as they start their own careers. These habits will shape what food is in demand, and therefore what food is produced. Not only do college students hold financial power over the future economy, but they must make the decision of whether to become the next unhealthy generation, that will also indoctrinate their children to accept the level of food quality that is currently labeled as junk food as a standard level quality of food.
“When schools, parents, families, and communities work together to support learning, students tend to earn higher grades, attend school more regularly, stay in school longer, and enroll in higher level programs.” (Van Roeckel, 2008, p. 1) Deer Valley High School in Glendale, AZ is the first high school built in the Deer Valley Unified Scholl District, and with a population around 1800 students, the high school is one of the bigger schools in the state. It has a tradition of family on its’ campus, where there are still teachers teaching that were there when the school opened in 1980. A number of former students have become new teachers on campus and just about all the teachers’ children have attended and graduated from the campus. With a school like ours, there are many connections to the community around it and it is demonstrated by the programs that bring in parent and community to help with the development of our students. There are numerous booster clubs run on our campus to help support student achievement on the sports fields, a school to work programs to teach the students necessary skills in different areas of either nursing, sports medicine classes, and in the culinary arts classrooms, and funding to our school to help ensure all students graduate on time. There are many programs on our campus, but I will discuss four of the programs: baseball booster club, C2G program, “school-to-work”, and the special education program sponsored by Arrowhead Hospital. These programs are designed to improve the relationships between the campus and the people in the community, and give all students on campus every opportunity to succeed in their future.
A community health assessment of the Hillside-Quadra area was performed and considered various aspects of the community, including the population, the socioeconomic environment, and health and social services. Personal communication with some of the residents determined that food insecurity is of major significance for many in the community. “Food insecurity exists within a household when one or more members do not have access to the variety or quantity of food they need due to lack of money” (Statistics Canada, 2015). Community kitchens (CK), are easily adapted to an IFK concept, have been implemented by two communities within Victoria (Appendix B; Personal Communication) and are capable of serving as a public health initiative that benefits the communities they serve (Iacovou et al.,
With an unlimited meal plan and buffet-style meals, do we students know how big our portions should be? If we are accustomed to being served super-sized portions, we might not realize when we are serving ourselves over-sized portions in our dining halls. In fact, researchers have found that increased portion size is an even greater problem in cafeteria settings like ours, noting a positive association between larger food receptacles and increased consumption(2). A correlational study at Cornell found significant weight gain in freshmen during the first twelve weeks of school and identified that both the “all-you-can-eat” dining hall style and student snacking on “junk-food” were key variables explaining a positive linear relationship with weight gai...
The Canadian Food Guide1 is an important health promotion tool, as long as it is adapted to the sociocultural context in which it is used. This is crucial for the First Nations, which are struggling with health problems related to nutrition and whose traditional eating habits must be taken into account2. Drawing deeply into their values and culture, Atikamekw health services have developed their own Food Guide (AFG) in 1998. For ten years, it was the main tool used by health workers to teach basic principles of healthy eating.
"Native American Youth 101." Aspen Institue. Aspen Institues, 24 July 11. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
(#13) Do you believe that Health food can power the brain and the body? Many parents believe that their should be more health food present in the cafeteria room. Although, many students feel they get their power from their favorite foods, healthy or not. Students should have a variety of both because if the students make the wrong choice of food it's on them not the school’s cafeteria because they provided both. The school and students should both make good
The Conference Board of Canada has predicted that Saskatchewan will lead the country in economic growth in 2012. According to a February 2012 news release by the Saskatchewan Government Saskatchewan is currently “posting the strongest economic growth in Canada - a gain of 3.9 per cent in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP)”. (add citation)Although our province is experiencing strong economic growth, many people in Saskatchewan are not benefiting from the economic boom. According to the Canadian Council on Learning “some adults and their families may experience chronic low wages, unemployment, poverty and social exclusion” (2009, p.7) as a result of low levels of education. . Our students are typically young, undereducated aboriginal women who continue to live in poverty. According to the Schoolplus document, poverty is a “factor contributes an important tectonic challenge to school ‘equilibrium”. (p11) The School Plus document also notes that while poverty is not unique to Saskatchewan, in Saskatchewan there is a “painful juxtaposition of need and plenty” (p.11) . Tectonic issues at North West Regional College (NWRC) include all of the factors identified by SchoolPlus and are all interconnected. Food availability and nutrition is a monumental concern. Reality for some of our students is the juxtaposition of obesity and the underlying reality of student malnourishment due to low quality food. “Overweight students garner very little compassion regarding malnourishment but the malnourishment is real and it may affect students’ educational, social and career outcomes.
Attendance is an important factor in children’s school success. Studies have shown that students who attend school regularly scores higher on test than their peers who are frequently absent (Epstein pg 309). Illness is one of the leading causes of absenteeism among school age kids. Therefore keeping kids healthy and teaching them ways to stay healthy will aid in avoiding missing school related to illness.
In order for children to achieve wellness, they are completely dependent upon the adults in their lives: parents, caregivers, friends, and teachers. In order to achieve wellness, teachers and caregivers must model and exhibit appropriate behaviors, i.e. exercise, healthy eating habits, personal hygiene, emotional fulfillment, and knowledge of healthy habits. Children begin learning this at home first with their parents/caregivers. Teachers are the next important person in a child’s life to help them achieve wellness (Sorte, et al., 2011). It is imperative for teachers and families to work together in order to achieve wellness for children.
Did you ever imagine that what goes into your body might depend on something other than your choice? Currently at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at the Daytona Beach campus, many types of campus issues exist. The mandatory meal plans for first-year students has become a very controversial issue. This controversy is caused by the mandatory purchase of at least 14 meals per week, amounting about $3,000. From my experience as a first-year student, I can say that I would save $1,000 an academic year eating the food and the quality I like if I was not required to buy meal plans. In this essay, I will argue that mandatory meal plans do not benefit first year students because of the cost, nutritional value, and dietary restrictions.
According to Monsen (2008) the Navajo Reservation occupying the northeastern Arizona, the southeast portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico, has a population of about 300,000, and only a handful of its residents have been trained as medicine men or medicine women. This fact shows the importance of integrating traditional healing practices into modern health care. This has already been practiced in some areas through including a room for the traditional Navajo healing practices in newly built health facilities (Birchfield 2000).
The cafeteria is not merely a place for small children; now that I am in college, I spend more time in the cafeteria than ever. Living in the dorms, I have no kitchen or any other place to cook. Instead, I have a meal plan that offers me fourteen meals each week at the Stanford/Hecht cafeteria. I eat lunch and dinner there as my two meals on most days. But, I do not and cannot go to the cafeteria and just get food. I get much more.
The campus cache carries a wide variety of foods. A student can find sandwiches, bread, granola bars, fruit, frozen food, a wide variety of drinks, sushi and so much more. Now, one might wonder why there is such a wide variety of food. The answer is, that there is such a wide variety of students that all want different things. Some students want to make their own food and some want to buy pre made frozen dishes. There is so much to be learned about the different cultures on campus just by observing the cache and paying attention to what different students are buying.
People eat food every day without thinking twice about it, because it is a necessity for us to live. How often do you think about what is in the foods that you eat? How many calories does it have? Are there any vitamins and minerals in it? Is it high in fat? For most of us and especially college students who live a busy life on the go, the answer to that question is probably no. Since becoming a recent graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania Academy of Culinary Arts, I have been more interested in food and what people are eating. Also since more young Americans are becoming obese I want to find out what they are eating and where. Going to college and seeing how students have poor eating habits I want to find out why they are eating this way. Is it because they are away from home for the first time? Or is it because that is the only food that is available for them? I also want to find out if students would eat healthier if it was provided for them? My hypothesis is that students eat unhealthy because it is more convenient for them. There is usually no time to cook a homemade meal and most college students are always in a hurry so it is easier to pick up takeout. Also most college students don’t know how to cook. I also believe that most college students don’t care if the food is unhealthy for them, as long as it tastes good. Hopefully, in the following pages I will uncover the wide world of college eating.