What do you get when you put a bell pepper and a carrot together with corn niblets, green beans, blueberries and eggplant?
A rainbow.
Chef Mary Kiernan demonstrates the rainbow of foods to children at Bernice M. Wright Lab School.
This multi-colored food kaleidoscope supports a deliberate effort known as “eating the rainbow” to help children make healthy food choices. Thanks to a grant from the American Culinary Federation (ACF) in support of Child Nutrition Day in October, associate teaching professor and ACF chef Mary Kiernan, presented a mini food demonstration and tasting of the rainbow with children at the Bernice M. Wright (BMW) Lab School.
Childhood Nutrition Day celebrated on or around Oct. 16 each year focuses on fostering and promoting awareness of proper nutrition. Recently, children at the BMW Lab School, a part of Falk College’s Department of Human Development and Family Science (HDFS), worked in small groups led by Chef Kiernan and Falk nutrition major Mary Mik, who is also a Susan R. Klenk Learning Assistant. The demonstration engaged children ages two through four on such topics as how many taste buds a person has and why the foods they sampled that day are important to good nutrition.
“It is exciting and essential for young children to interact with professionals—to see a real live chef in person. It exposes them to new interests, as well as new information,” says BMW Director Daria Webber.
The hope was for children to take home their learning to their families. “We talked about things that taste too good, and why it is important to eat some of those foods that may not taste great but we should eat anyway because of what they do for our bodies,” adds Kiernan.
The young BMW students weren’t the only ones engaging in learning that day. Syracuse University student interns from HDFS had the opportunity to experience and observe this program.
Founded in 1970, the BMW South Campus laboratory school offers high-quality, developmentally appropriate inclusive early childhood education programming accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Since the launch of Childhood Nutrition Day in 1995, hundreds of chefs across the nation have participated in events in support of healthy childhood nutrition.
