There were nine fourth-grade girls surrounding my kitchen table and all of them were curious about what I had just set before them.
My troop of Junior Girl Scouts was earning their Staying Fit badge. In front of us was a tray with 10 items of food. Five of the offerings were whole foods: corn on the cob, an apple, a potato, cashews and raspberries. The other five foods were processed in some way: popcorn, applesauce in a squeezable pouch, potato chips, a granola bar and a Hapi Bing Bing ice cream cone from H Mart.
“When you look at this food,” I asked, “what do you notice?”
“The barbecue chip make me hungry,” said a girl with curly hair.
“Me too,” added her friend. “And so does the popcorn.”
“All of the real food has a processed buddy,” one of the girls pointed out.
“Processed food is right.” I nodded my head. “That’s what we’re talking about today.”
“We know,” said my daughter. “You put a label that says ‘Processed Foods versus Whole Foods’ on the tray.” (A truism of Girl Scouts is that the leader’s daughter is usually a wise-guy.)
“No food is good or bad,” I said, moving on. “Food is just food. But some food has been scientifically engineered to make our brains want to eat a lot of it. Can you figure out what those foods are on this tray?”
“The potato chips,” said the first girl. “And now I’m starving. I didn’t eat a snack before I came.” I gave her the apple to much on.
“Let’s pretend we’re all eating apples,” I suggested. “What happens? We chew and chew and chew, and our brain tells us we are eating food. Then all that fiber goes to our stomach and signals to our brain that we’re full.” I picked up the squeezable pouch of apple sauce. “But what happens with this?”
“You slurp it down real fast,” said the girl next to me, “and then you have trash to throw away.”
“That ice cream cone doesn’t even look like real food,” said a girl from across the table. “Talk about fake.”
Seeing all of the foods side by side had made an impact on me as an adult, and I was excited to see that the girls were impressed, too.
The biggest moment came when we unwrapped the granola bar and passed it around the table. It said “cashew” on the label but we only identified three nuts in the whole bar. As we read the ingredients, we found four types of sugar.
Another truism about Girl Scouts — or any type of volunteerism — is that sometimes life lessons are easier to absorb when they don’t come from a parent.
I had the feeling, right then and there, that this was a demonstration the girls would remember for the rest of their lives. Now that’s something to chew on.
Jennifer Bardsley publishes books under her own name and the pseudonym Louise Cypress. Find her online on Instagram @the_ya_gal, on Twitter @jennbardsley or on Facebook as The YA Gal. Email her at teachingmybabytoread@gmail.com.
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