When it comes to childhood obesity, there's one trailblazer here in Arizona trying to change the conversation around it: Charleen Badman, the James Beard Award-winning chef behind FnB in Scottsdale.
Since 2016, she's been going to schools teaching kids about food. It's called the Blue Watermelon Project.
The Show joined Badman at Echo Canyon School, where a group of students was making amaranth pancakes with all the toppings on a recent Monday afternoon.
“We're a group of chefs, volunteers, farmers, advocates, educators, principals, and teachers, you know, it's taste education,” Badman said.
The kids are mixing, chopping, whipping their reward after harvesting the key ingredient they grew themselves right there on school grounds.
“They were able to see their amaranth grow. They planted it in September. We harvested some today. They're now having pancakes. They're gonna be able to taste what they planted,”
But do they like their healthier than your average pancakes and whipped cream?
“Is it good, you guys?” The Show host Lauren Gilger asks the students.
“The only thing I don't like is that the whipped cream kind of tastes a little like water,” a student answered.
“There's no sugar in it, probably, huh?” Gilger said.
“You happy? OK,” Badman said. “I can see you liked yours. All right, good, good.”
CHARLEEN BADMAN: But liking the food is not the point, as Badman told me when she came into our studios to talk more about it. I started originally when we first opened the restaurant going to one school. It was Arcadia Neighborhood Learning Center, and they had asked me to come and do a chef in the garden, and they had this beautiful garden.
They wanted to use the produce, they wanted to have the students be able to see it being used and that the opportunity of having a chef come in would be really great for the students. But, after doing that first one, I was, I just loved it.
I wanted to come back. And so I kept going back. And when I say it started in 2016, by then it's when I really saw that I wanted to take this opportunity I had with one school and do it in multiple schools.
LAUREN GILGER: And it's gotten much bigger since then, right?
BADMAN: It is, this year we're in 35 schools next year, 50 schools.
GILGER: Wow. And you work with chefs all over the state as well.
BADMAN: We do, and it's so many chefs that have been able to. They've just stepped up and, and have become part of what we're trying to do, the movement of, of getting an opportunity for students to try fresh food and, and also to know where it comes from.
GILGER: Yeah, OK, so let's talk a little bit about why this resonated with you so much when you went to that first school to do the first version of this, right? I mean, are you like a kid person? Was this about the kids for you? Was that surprising to you that you enjoyed it so much?
BADMAN: It was surprising I enjoyed it so much because I had told the vice principal who invited me, you know, I don't like children, and, but I'm going to do this. And then I saw, I felt how great it felt. I saw the difference I was making like immediately and the opportunity and the joy it brought the students and I was just so excited to go back.
I mean, I'm passionate about food, I'm passionate about cooking. And then to have this opportunity to share it with younger people is just, I think it's great.
GILGER: So when, what kind of reactions have you gotten from kids? Like, do they, how, how foreign is the idea of growing a garden and harvesting it and cooking with that food to these kids?
BADMAN: All sorts of reactions. I've recently had a 6-year-old say, “I don't eat plants,” and she wasn't going to participate. They will tell you they, they're not going to eat things, they're not going to eat what you brought. And then there's, there are others that are excited about it.
And we don't, we don't ever tell them they're going to have to eat this or you, or you know, you got to take that try it bite. Obviously I want them to try it, but if they don't want to, it's OK. And often they see how excited their friends are about it and they're like, “OK, I'll try it.”
GILGER: Yeah. What are your memories of food when you were a kid? Like, were you exposed to fresh foods as a young kid?
BADMAN: Not a whole lot. It just wasn't something we had. When I went to visit my grandparents that lived in California, we had a lot. They had a garden. My grandmother had come from a farm. She always made sure she had a garden.
They had a macadamia nut tree, they had avocado tree. They had all these beautiful things in the backyard. I can tell you that I definitely didn't appreciate them. I was definitely the child that was saying, “I don't want to eat these things.” And I just wish, I look back at that memory and wish I would have been more appreciative of, of what they were trying to offer because, you know, they had really some of the best food.
GILGER: So you grew to be not just a chef, but a chef who's really famous for the way you work with vegetables in particular. How did, how did that transformation happen for you?
BADMAN: It, it happened while having FnB in the last 15 years. It happened, with the fact that I changed my eating habits and I changed what I like to eat. I think that successful chefs, they, they cook what they enjoy. And I enjoy eating vegetables and I enjoy coming up with different ways to flavor them and different ways to prepare them. And, and I think that that was my own kind of personal journey of, of changing the way I ate and then putting that into how I cook today.
GILGER: Yeah. Is this for you about nutrition for kids? Is it about making kids healthier? Is it about the food and just exposing them to it?
BADMAN: I think it's all of those things. I think that, you know, it is about having better eating habits. It definitely is about maybe trying something that they've never had before, being excited about fruits and vegetables, being excited about food. And then I think it translates into maybe them, with that exposure that we're able to give them, maybe having them open up to trying more things like say in the cafeteria.
GILGER: So what do you make of the conversation around childhood obesity right now, which sort of dovetails with what you're doing? I mean, the rates are sort of an epidemic in our country, but we also know that those kids face discrimination in their own right.
BADMAN: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think another part of why Blue Watermelon started, why I feel like I want to take this opportunity to work with kids is, is because of my own personal journey. I mean, I was, overweight by the time I was 10, and it's a struggle, it's a struggle to eat well and, I think that if you are given the opportunity to have better food choices and be exposed to better food choices, then that'll continue as you, you know, grow older.
And then, you know, I think, I think about, again, going back to my grandmother and all that exposure of like, you know, the, it was there, but I was like I would literally trade that avocado sandwich to get something like in the school lunch that was, you know, bad for me, you know, get the bologna sandwich or whatever.
GILGER: So those, I mean those experiences like shape you though it sounds like?
BADMAN: Oh, it does.
GILGER: Do you see yourself in a lot of those kids that you work with in this project?
BADMAN: Oh, absolutely. I see, I see the kids that get bullied. I see the kids that are bullies. I see the kids that, you know, or the fear of eating, maybe even the fear of eating around other people, I can see all of that.
I mean, it's interesting that another chef that was working with me said, you know, I, she was talking to a group of people and she said, “I saw Charleen go to the kid that was by themselves and sit down with them, you know, that's how she is,” and it's like that's how I was in like in high school.
I mean, I remember, I wanted to be around the students that were the ones getting picked on and we're the ones that maybe had a disability or something like that. Definitely not the cool kids. I just, those were my friends, you know, I feel those kids when I, when we work with them and, and, what, you know, try to spend a little extra time with them and make sure they know that they're seen.
That's part of what we do with our food, too, is like we have different chefs every month coming up with a dish and we want to make sure that, that the students with our recipes, can feel like maybe something that they're having at home is being seen in the classroom and that they can be proud of where they're from and their heritage and things like that.
And that they can, they can feel seen. It's really important, I think as a child that you, that you feel that way. The food has all of those ways of touching somebody.
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