As the John Lewis Middle School botany and culinary arts program in Waukegan enters its fourth year, it has grown from a greenhouse where students learn how to cook their crops to providing healthy food for people in a community some call a food desert or food swamp.
Though the first priority remains growing healthy food, cooking and getting a chance to eat it, freshly harvested produce is given free to faculty and staff, parents getting their children, food pantries, some community members and sold in a local grocery store.
As the students learn how to grow, harvest and prepare a variety of foods, they become teachers as well. Brian Greene, who created the class, developed and expanded the program, said they take it home to their families.
“What we’re doing here, we’re taking home,” Alex Elias, a Lewis eighth-grader said. “Our families are learning about healthy eating, too.”
The botany and culinary arts class is becoming a program to not only feed the hungry in the community, but provide healthy eating to people who too often rely on a diet of processed foods.
As the program grew, Greene said students would go to the front of the building just before the school day ended with baskets of tomatoes, peppers, beans, carrots and more, giving them to parents in their cars waiting to take their children home.
“They’re taking home food that was picked that morning,” he said. “It’s going from here to someone in the Waukegan community for free.”
Students are learning the meaning of a food desert, where Greene said there are not food stores with fresh produce nearby nor land on which to grow food. They are trying to change some of that, like Liana Ortiz, an eighth grader, whose family has a garden.
“We have peas, carrots, broccoli and tomatoes,” she said. “We freeze some so we can have it later.”
Juliana Rabadan, a Lewis eighth grader, said the more students learn, the more they are able to share with their families. Changes are occurring in homes in the area around the school, and more will as additional students take the class year after year.
“We’re learning how to cook different kinds of food,” Rabadan said. “We’re teaching our families how to do this every chance we get.”
Nearly 18 months ago, Greene said a food forest was added to the garden, containing rows of fresh produce. With the help of the Morton Arboretum, 30 fruit trees were planted and are now bearing fruit.
Another avenue to get fresh produce into the community is a recently started partnership between the class and Supermercado Gonzalez in Waukegan. Greene said the store sells their freshly harvested fruits and vegetables. A percentage of the sales go to the class to help grow the program.
While a food desert is a place where fresh, healthy food is not readily available, Lake County Health Department Executive Director Mark Pfister said recently a “food swamp” is also a danger to people in low-income areas with fewer options.
Pfister describes a good swamp as an area where people eat inexpensive, processed food which can lead to poor health conditions like diabetes, heart disease or obesity. Greene said in a working-class community like Waukegan, that occurs too frequently.
“We know this is happening more in minority communities because serving processed food is easier,” Greene said. “We have to change the mentality. We’re providing a way for our students and their families to eat healthier. They make it, and they take it home.”
The latest effort to grow the program is turning a mobile classroom into a kitchen outside the greenhouse where it will be easier to cook the crops than it is now in the greenhouse. Greene said he is working on grant funding, and he foresees community use of the kitchen.
