Since discovering Weston A. Price and the importance indigenous people placed on the health of babies and growing children, I have fallen in love with prenatal and early childhood nutrition. I understood the role of creating a healthier “next generation”. Many of the problems that plague our children today, whether tooth decay, eczema, mood and behavioural disorders, sleep problems or learning difficulties, can be avoided with adequate nutrition.
In 2014 I started providing nutrition consultancy in schools. I worked in a Waldorf kindergarten in Suva, Fiji. The traditional Fijian diet is very rich. It's a tropical island, so they are lucky to have all those tropical fruits like banana, papaya, pineapple, mango and root vegetables like sweet potato, yam and cassava. They have an abundance of coconuts, so they cook most of their food with coconut milk and oil. Additionally, seafood and pork are a large part of their diet. They have local seaweed and unusual vegetables like duruka (the “Fijian asparagus”).
Duruka (left) is the closed bud of the sugarcane plant. It is usually cooked with coconut milk or mixed with curry. Nama (right) is a seaweed found mainly in the waters of Fiji and resembles small green grapes. It is part of the Pacific island nation's daily diet and is often served soaked in coconut milk and added to salads.
It was an international kindergarten, so there were children from all over the world, with different cultures and eating habits. To start the program, I wanted to understand what kind of food they consumed there. They had a small organic garden and were raising some chickens to produce eggs, which was nice! But all the other ingredients, they bought at the supermarket. White flour, white sugar, UHT milk and vegetable oil were used daily.
With the nutrition consultancy program, I worked closely with the cook, parents and children to find the best options to create a healthier menu, while ensuring that the children still enjoyed the food.
Steps of the nutritional consultancy program:
The first step: Find locally available ingredients. The farmers market in Suva was heaven! People from small communities came from all over the island with their products to sell there. There were so many interesting things!
Second: Create new recipes. We were mixing traditional Fijian recipes with foreign cuisine, but using only local, whole ingredients. For example: gnocchi made from cassava or granola fermented with local nuts and dried tropical fruits were in the menu.
Third: Create a nutrient-dense menu and train the cook on the new recipes. (I made sure white flour, white sugar, UHT milk and vegetable oil were excluded from the menu: we used cassava and local chestnuts to make breads and cakes, and replaced the vegetable oil with coconut oil. We added some nutrient-dense foods like homemade yogurt and sauerkraut).
Fourth: We started gardening and cooking together with the children so that they could be involved in the entire eating process.
I just loved working with those kids. It was fascinating to be part of this process and observe the positive results with them. For me, the strong relationship that we (my husband and I) created with the parents and the entire school team is unforgettable. Everyone was very supportive and willing to help in every way.
In 2015, I embarked on a new challenge in Asia. I spent over a year working at Student Village, Green School, Bali.
Green School is also an international school, which focuses on sustainability and teaches children and teenagers to discover their passion and purpose in life.
At Student Village, my husband, I and two other incredible people were responsible for looking after around 15 teenagers (11 to 17 years old). We were an extension of the school. We were living together with the children and our concept was that the children would continue learning while they were at home.
My mission was to transform the kitchen. To bring a more nutritious, local and sustainable approach.
Again, the cook responsible for the kitchen served highly processed foods (cakes, cookies, sauces, ketchup, soft drinks, frozen foods, etc.) and used products such as white flour, vegetable oil and white sugar. So I followed the same steps as when I was in Fiji, adapting to this new context in Bali:
I looked for local and sustainable/organic suppliers. There was an amazing organic farm that raised pigs, chickens and made raw cheese. Our neighbors (hare krishna) had some cows and we could buy raw milk from them. Nearby we had an organic store for dry goods. And at the local market we find all the vegetables and fruits grown on the island. We also started an organic garden with the students.
I created new recipes mixing Balinese/Indonesian food with cuisine from around the world using local ingredients. I started, together with the cooks, making sourdough breads and cakes (with local rice flour), fermented granola, homemade yogurt and cream cheese, sauerkraut, lacto-fermented vegetables, kombucha, kefir, peanut butter using preparation ancestral methods, bone broths, sauces, etc.
I created a nutrient-dense menu for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. All cakes, cookies and drinks were now prepared on site. The menu included bone broth, properly prepared grains, eggs, meats, local vegetables and fruits, and fermented foods.
I trained the cooks to learn the new recipes and cooked alongside them to ensure they understood the processes.
We also create programs to integrate children into all aspects of food: from growing to cooking (recycling and cleaning!):
"Be The Chef" was a project, where once a week, one of the children was in charge of cooking for everyone who lived in the Student Village (about 20 people). They could bring a recipe from home or just cook something they really liked to eat. Together with the students, I adapted these recipes using whole and local ingredients. Most foods considered "junk food" can be transformed into healthy foods if we choose the right ingredients. I remember an American student wanted to prepare a “broccoli and cheddar soup” which, with the right ingredients, such as high-quality milk and cheese, organic vegetables and homemade broth, turned into a very nutritious meal.
Farmers Market: We started selling some of the products we made with the students at the farmers market of the school (like kombucha, kefir, sauerkraut, fermented granola, sourdough bread, raw yogurt cream cheese). Market profits would go to students! When you let them pursue their own projects it is what gives them the chance to succeed and fail and gives them the freedom to decide who they are.
Games and art: Turning basic everyday tasks into games or art also helped them take on responsibilities and enjoy “boring tasks” like washing dishes, recycling and gardening. When you assign tasks based on performance, they can determine how long it takes them to complete them.
Bad habits are hard to break. However, the same goes for good habits. When children observe and experience good habits carried out by their parents, they are more likely to continue doing so – especially around food. Especially during the early years, when children are naturally intrigued by experiencing everything for the first time. They are constantly absorbing new information and are able to learn quickly by example.
The children at the Student Village in Bali were older than the children at the Waldorf Kindergarten in Fiji. Teenagers may have more difficulty initiating healthy habits, especially if good eating practices were not introduced when they were younger. Most of our students in Bali came from big cities and were extensively exposed to fast food and the practical lifestyle. They had already ingrained these strong bad health habits in themselves.
At first it was scary for them to know that the menu would change. They were eating frozen lasagna for dinner, packaged cakes for snacks, for example, which was very convenient for the taste buds. But different from what they expected, a nutrient-dense diet is far the opposite of that “no oil, no salt, no flavor” diet. When you add bone broth, lots of healthy fats, unrefined salt, meat with bones, organic vegetables, the food is not only healthy, but it tastes good! Then, little by little, they began to understand that they didn't need to eat tasteless to eat healthy.
In 2019 I worked for another school in England. A forestry school based on a biodynamic farm near London. I could spend hours writing about the school and my experience there. It was also an incredible experience. But the steps and principles were the same ones I used in Fiji and Bali and once again it worked!
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