As a mother, I worry about what my child eats. The obesity rates for children are worse than ever. Our children are eating more bad food and getting less exercise than ever. This can lead to diabetes and heart problems at a younger and younger age.
FoodCorps hopes to change that by getting kids to eat healthy meals. How can that happen? FoodCorps is kind of like the PeaceCorps – for food that is. FoodCorps finds recent college graduates to volunteer to go into a limited-resource community for a year to teach about healthy living. They offer nutrition education, help schools build and grow gardens, and try to get the school cafeterias to offer healthy options.
If you think about it, a lot of the kids today don’t know much about healthy eating. How many of us rush home to cook Hamburger Helper or stop by McDonald’s for a Happy Meal? Most of us are always rushed and busy, and we’ve gotten to used to convenient meals, but we’ve forgotten what these easy meals cost us.
FoodCorps sets out to teach children about food, where it comes from, how it is grown, how easy it is to grow, and how eating healthier can help them.
The volunteers have to be dedicated, but they certainly aren’t left without any benefits. They are required to sign on for a year, in which they will receive $15,000 to live on, $5,550 to pay for education, a student loan forbearance, health insurance, childcare, and training and mentorship.
Four FoodCorps service members have been placed in Arizona to help the Tohono O’odham nation. More than 60% of the adults there have diabetes and the children are headed in that direction. FoodCorps helped promote gardens and got schools to purchase local food from tribal farmers.
There are also FoodCorps service members in Mississippi, which has the highest percentage of obese high schoolers in the nation. They helped implement both healthier diets and physical activity in Jackson Public Schools and the Mississippi Delta.
Next time you think there isn’t anyone out there trying to help the kids eat healthier, think about FoodCorps.