Education
Most of us know that freshly prepared food is healthier than processed foods.
Providing people with the tools they need to cook is an important goal
And that is true, but let’s say you are trying to teach someone to make salsa from scratch.
You give them a recipe card and all the necessary ingredients you think you have given them all the necessary tools required to start making salsa, right?
Wrong. You are assuming two things.
You assume that they:
Have a knife with which to slice and dice the tomato and prepare the other ingredients for the dish and a cutting board on which to do that prep.
Know what “dice” means.
If they don’t have the knife and they have never been shown what dicing is, this recipe is inaccessible and essentially worthless to them.
If you put yourself in the shoes of the person who is reading the recipe card, you can begin to see why it is easier for them to just go purchase the unhealthy jar of processed salsa from the dollar store, even though it may actually cost more than making it themselves.
Food Education That Actually Works.
StarkFresh helps host and coordinate cooking/nutrition classes all over Stark County, OH, and supports such programs by providing fresh food and helping solve distribution challenges.
This is just one way that StarkFresh helps people take control of their own nutrition.
Every time a group visits one of our farm sites, there is at least one person who doesn’t know the basic facts about where their food comes from, so part of our mission is to provide that education.
We often hear people say that lettuce comes from bags, or that mint tastes like gum. Some even find it disgusting that a carrot has dirt on it when it comes out of the ground, and they think it should be thrown away.
This is not about intelligence.
When people don’t know where their food comes from, it’s because that knowledge has never been shared with them, not because they lack the intelligence to understand. Many people today have simply never been taught how to make informed food choices, and they’ve never been given the tools they need to feed themselves well.
People need to be taken outside their comfort zone to learn how to nourish themselves well, but the process needs to be gentle to be most effective.
We are committed to gently challenging people’s beliefs about food and helping them recognize that they can work through their fear of the unknown to find a new path of empowerment.
We integrate meaningful education into everything we do -- from hosting film screenings and holding open houses to teaching classes and leading workshops.