A Nutritious Harvest: Pineapples to Papaya

Huddled around a classroom table, second- and third-grade students took turns adding ingredients to a big, stainless steel bowl. In went the peaches and nectarines they had cut up with plastic knives. Next came the plain yogurt, dumped in by the cupful. When it was time to add liquid, the youngsters at Mayall Street Elementary School in North Hills weren’t sure their concoction was actually going to become a smoothie.

“It looks like eggs,” said summer school student Gabriel Gamboa, 9, as he poured a cup of orange juice atop white yogurt.

After a few minutes in a blender, it was time for a taste test: good, but a little sour, was the consensus. With the addition of more honey, reviews improved.

“It was fun when I scooped the yogurt” into the measuring cup, said Darwin Dialogo, 8. “I’ve never been interested in cooking, but I’m more interested now. I think I’ll try to make this at home.”

This is exactly what officials with Los Angeles Unified School District’s Nutrition Network hope to accomplish through their Harvest of the Month program -- getting students to eat more healthful foods at school and home. Thanks to federal funds, 6,000 to 8,000 crates of fresh fruit or vegetables are distributed monthly to 236 schools throughout the district. The children touch, smell and taste the offerings, sometimes for the first time.

The program began in March 2001 with pineapples and has continued with green beans, sweet potatoes and papaya. This month, students learned about stone fruit, including cherries, plums and apricots, in addition to the peaches and nectarines that went into the Mayall Street blender.

“The month we studied blueberries, no kid had ever seen a blueberry outside of a blueberry muffin,” said Thomas Turner, who teaches English and English as a second language to seventh- and eighth-graders at George Washington Carver Middle School, south of downtown L.A.

Harvest of the Month is available to those district schools where at least 50% of the students receive free or reduced-price lunches. At least 10 staff members at each campus must teach 30 hours of nutrition education during the school year.

Teachers are encouraged to weave nutrition into core study areas such as math and reading. Some students, for example, are asked to calculate the circumference of a cucumber slice, while others research why carrots are more nutritious when cooked than raw. Younger students might read books that relate to the selected fruit or vegetable, such as “Broccoli-Flavored Bubble Gum,” and older kids might be asked to read “The House on Mango Street.”

Before making their peach-nectarine smoothie, the Mayall students made a diagram comparing and contrasting types of stone fruit. Afterward, they listened as teacher Judy Richter read them “Jam,” the story of a clever dad who finds creative uses for plums growing on the family’s backyard tree.

“Each teacher can come up with their own way of integrating nutrition education,” said Irene Kratz, Nutrition Network interim project director.

Participating teachers receive a four-page newsletter each month with information about the featured fruit or vegetable. This month’s newsletter about stone fruit gave the history and Spanish translations of different varieties, reading recommendations, recipes, research questions, science experiments and math problems, such as figuring out how many cherry pies can be made from one tree.

The newsletters are put together by district dietitians and teachers.

“When we were looking at the avocado, we scooped it out, then somebody wondered, ‘Does an avocado skin float?’ Another person suggested making a crayon rub out of it,” said Lissa Mooney, registered dietitian and nutrition specialist with the Nutrition Network. “We play with it and come up with some of the wackiest things.”

The amount of produce is immense. For example, in May 2002, the district distributed 110,000 ears of fresh corn to schools, and in February, 66,000 pounds of tangerines. The school district, which buys its produce wholesale, spends an average of $40,000 a month on the produce, which includes handling, packaging and storage, officials said. Exotic or high-cost produce is shunned in favor of items that are in season and readily available in the supermarket.

Funding for Harvest of the Month comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, through the California Department of Health Services. Schools in Hawthorne and Downey also have programs.

The program dovetails with a plan to have more healthful foods available to Los Angeles students. School board member Marlene Canter, who last year pushed to ban sodas on L.A. Unified campuses, introduced a motion last week to set stricter guidelines for fat, sugar and sodium content and to provide salad and fruit bars.

With a national obesity epidemic, the Harvest of the Month program is admirable, said Judith S. Stern, vice president of the American Obesity Assn.

“It’s a huge problem and it’s great they’re doing something,” said Stern, who is also a professor of nutrition and internal medicine at UC Davis.

The UCLA School of Public Health this fall will compare students at schools participating in various nutrition programs to students in schools with comparable demographics that haven’t put programs in place, said Mike Prelip, assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Community Health Sciences. Researchers will assess things such as students’ diets and knowledge about different foods.

Randy Benigno, principal of Monlux Elementary School in North Hollywood, said he’s noticed a difference in both the kids’ and the teachers’ attitudes toward nutrition since the harvest program began two years ago. “We now have veggies at our staff meetings. The doughnuts are still there, but people are moving away from them,” he said. “We’re trying to eat healthier. It’s helping everybody.”