In early January, way before we knew our bus would be delayed and our Australian Tour delayed, Kirsten from The Smith Family’s Communities for Children in Rockhampton contacted me. She had heard about The Mad Food Science Program™ and really wanted to include it as part of Rockhampton’s Romp In The Park Children’s Festival. At the time, our Australian Tour route had us being up Rockhampton way at the same time as the festival, so I was excited to accept her invitation. It was a chance to Transform Children’s Health In Rockhampton. Yay!
Fast forward 3 months to end of March when we discovered our bus and tour would be delayed considerably – my husband, Israel and I vowed we would not let the situation prevent us from taking our mission to Transform Children’s Health, One Lunchbox At A Time -(see Broken Not Beaten). So instead of cancelling our commitment to Kirsten, we set about planning a big road trip with the kids, in our small 4WD and our camp equipment. We also booked in to run The Mad Food Science Program at the two Le Smiley’s Pre-Schools in Gracemere.
It was a 4,000 kilometre round trip, but it was so worth it! Although we did not count each person using one of those clicky counter things, we estimate we touched about 1,000 people (children and parents) and served about 500 smoothies over 3 very full days.
We also learnt so much about ourselves as a travelling family. We learnt our magic song for turning a car fight between the kids or a grumpy road trip to fun was Uptown Funk by Marc Ronson, featuring Bruno Mars (btw, your welcome to the link). We learnt Coleman make the best pop up tent because seriously, there was not one domestic when putting it up or down. We learnt that Australia has about 150 ‘large’ things to see and we saw only 8 of them on this trip. We learnt how much fun schooling is for all of us on the road – we learnt about Matilda The Kangaroo (the link is our 9yo daughter’s blog here), about Cane Sugar farming in Qld, about plantation forests in Qld, how Rockhampton is the Beef capital of Australia and every 3 years they host the WORLD’S largest Beef Expo. And most of all we were inspired even more to continue our mission to Transform Children’s Health – the only way is up, baby!
So just how did we Transform Children’s Health in Rockhampton? Let me start by saying, our mission is all about educating children and parents about real food in fun ways that starts a conversation at home – a conversation that is usually a power struggle between parents and their children. This conversation is enough to kickstart that family to change at least one thing to improve their health. Our mission is not to purport we will single handedly change the crisis of children’s health in Australia – that is going to require lots of great people going out on a limb and bringing children’s health to the forefront. Some of this wonderful work is being done by Alexx Stuart, Brenda Janschek, Stephanie Alexander, Tanya from Additive Free Pantry, Alisa from 123 Nourish Me, Charlotte Carr of Bubba Yum Yum, and of course the incredible Jamie Oliver. Just to name a few.
So back to that question. At The Romp In The Park Festival, I spoke to lots n lots of children and parents about what they used their tongue for and what they used their eyes for. It was conclusive – children said their tongues are for tasting, eyes are for seeing. Aha! Once they had told me this, I would then ask them if they could do me a favour and use their tongue to taste a drink that their eyes will probably tell them one thing, but when they tasted it, their tongue is likely to tell them another thing. The drink was a green smoothie. I wish I could have bottled some of the facial expressions – not just of the kids either (lol). The facials when they were putting the green smoothie to their lips were great, but their faces when they actually tasted it was priceless. Of course, many children didn’t like it. But MANY many more did like it. Some even came back for seconds.
Once children said the smoothie actually tasted yummy like banana or strawberry, I would then talk to them about that’s why we should always try our food with our tongues before saying we don’t like it. Because our tongue, which does the tasting, often tastes something very different to what our eyes see. We also spoke about how it’s ok to try something then decide we don’t like it, but it’s not ok to let our eyes tell us we don’t like it. Visitors to our stand were also given a Rainbow of Fruits and Vegetables chart to talk about at home, some fun fruit & vegetable stickers and a recipe sheet for a healthy choc fudge cake.
This simple fun message of our eyes are for seeing and our tongue is for tasting is now a great conversation starter for parents who met us on our visit. The conversation could go something like this “Remember that lady who gave you the green smoothie and you really liked it, even though you thought it looked yucky because it was green? Remember how she spoke to you about what part of your body does the tasting of food? What part was that? Are you using your tongue now or your eyes? How about we close our eyes, and let our tongues taste. And then, it’s ok if you taste it and don’t like it ….
See how the conversation starts and is so different? We have just helped transform children’s health in that family.
Of course, our mission does extend beyond just having conversations. Our travels around Australia will be used to document a photographic and written commentary of what is happening in children’s health in the country. This will look at how readily available is real food, how is ‘pretend / processed’ food being marketed in towns, what is the visual state of children’s health, what do town’s folk feel are the issues around health and more.
We would also like to take this opportunity to thank our fabulous National Partner WorldWide Printing Solutions who designed and printed 2,000 sheets of Fruits & Vegetable stickers, plus printed our other handouts for our time in Rockhampton. Without their generous support, we could not have left the families in Rockhampton with great printed tools to help transform their children’s health by continuing the conversation at home.
Thank you Rockhampton. We love you, and we can’t wait to come back in 2016!