Environmental Education: Sustainable Food

Sustainable Food at IslandWood's School Overnight Program

Food is a vehicle for all kinds of learning. I know from my own life experience that cooking links me with people and places near and far. The carrots I'm peeling still carry some of the soil that bore them, and when I begin to make a stew by browning flour in oil, I can hear the warm, southern diction of my mother's voice traveling over time "First you make a roux."

Even if we never go near the stove, we learn right at the table how to be human in the most fundamental ways. For the tiny, almost invisible, rituals that comprise a family meal are the building blocks of culture. What's more, it could be argued that eating links us to our environment more intimately than any other activity in which we engage. After all, every morsel of food we eat comes from a plant or an animal that is part of the same great ecosystem that sustains us.

As the chef at IslandWood, I offer children attending our School Overnight Program an opportunity to experience a a series of family meals within the context of their environmental studies. Engaging with other people is one aspect of the environment that all of us face every day and, whether or not we are aware of it, the choices we make about our food have a huge impact on the natural world. The purchasing decisions we make at IslandWood effect our community, and the example we set has the potential to effect choices the children make in years to come. My hope is that the children will be better prepared to make food choices that make them healthier people in a healthier world.

Decisions about what to serve are steered not only by questions like "What will children eat?" but by "What's in season?" and "What's produced nearby?" Many children are completely unaware of the connections that bind the table to the earth. Everyone knows that apples grow on trees, but surprisingly few children realize that apples ripen in the fall and that in the winter and spring the trees are bare or only blooming. Children who see meat only after it is portioned and packaged or cooked and served, have no way of linking their entree to the animal from which it was derived. Simply presenting the children with a few comments about how the animals were raised when we serve beef and chicken might open their eyes to the fact that meat comes from mammals and birds.

Not just what we serve, but the way we serve food also has the potential to demonstrate how relationships are developed and sustained between children and the world. So meals in the dining hall are presented not individually portioned on a cafeteria line, but on platters to be shared and discussed at communal tables of eight. Cafeteria-style service, which arose out of the industrial age and our fascination with factories and machines, communicates something very different from family-style service, which speaks directly to the relationships between the people at the table.

Socialization is just one aspect of the family meal. Environmental studies are really about the relationship between people and the natural world. So it's vital that the principles of ecology should be reflected in the dining hall. And the challenge for us is to translate abstract concepts like "Networks," "Nested Systems," "Cycles," and "the flow of energy and resources" into kid-friendly lessons at mealtime. These concepts are not presented formally in the dining hall; indeed no dogmatic instruction of any kind is offered at the table. Instead, words and phrases like "organic," "sustainably raised," and "free-range" are used to describe the various elements of each meal when the menu is announced.

On Build-Your-Own Burrito night, we provide "sustainably raised Oregon Country Beef." We explain that the beef contains no antibiotics and no steroids. "Free range chicken" constitutes the main dish on teriyaki chicken night and "Organically grown Basmati rice" rounds out the menu.

On Pizza Night, the children learn that the "organic flour" was grown right here in the northwest. "That means it didn't have to be shipped from far away and less fuel was used." Gathered as they are around the table, the children spontaneously talk about the food. And since the food has been linked with these descriptive words, core concepts of ecology are naturally integrated into their conversations.

We also feel it is important that the basic rules of conservation be observed in the dining hall. Naturally we recycle cans, bottles and paper, and in fact we purchase all of our food with minimal packaging to start with. We also compost any leftover food waste. As much as possible, these choices are made in a way that makes them transparent so that the children understand what's happening.

At the front of the dining hall is a sculptural scale of a man standing on a globe with his arms outstretched. At the base of the sculpture buckets are labeled "Compost," "Liquids" and "Garbage." Over the course of their four-day stay, the kids are encouraged to reduce the amount of food waste they produce in the dining hall. The graphic reminder of the functioning sculpture, which was promptly nicknamed "Wade," made this happen. Typically, the students reduce their waste by half between the first and last meals taken in the dining hall.

Food from the compost bin goes outside to a composting area and from there into an organic garden where children see the soil built-up with the addition of compost. Some of the vegetables in the garden are recognizable as the same foods they have seen in the dining hall. The notion of a cycle in the ecosystem is firmly planted.

One huge challenge we have had to overcome is the economics of serving sustainable foods. Food raised without the use of pesticides, growth hormones, and antibiotics is something of a boutique, specialty item in today's marketplace. And even though it could be argued that these foods are more economical to produce in the long run, a short run to the grocery store proves that they come with a higher price tag attached. Simply put, the cost of these ingredients is higher than it would be if we were to buy conventional staples.

In order to offset the cost of buying better food, we make everything from scratch. Instead of buying sliced bread and deli meats for example, we bake and slice our own bread using organically grown flour, and we roast and slice naturally raised breasts of turkey. We even make our own mayonnaise. Because we avoid so-called "value added foods" and buy raw ingredients in bulk, we can afford better food. One additional benefit of making everything from scratch is kitchen morale. The cooks are enthusiastic about their work and derive tremendous satisfaction from preparing food of which they can be proud.

Best of all, the kids are completely delighted with the food. Caught up in the day-to-day operations of running the kitchen, I sometimes miss opportunities to see how the food impacts the experience of the people who come here. But now and then, I am provided with a glimpse. One boy shared with one of the chaperones that he had never had green lettuce before, but he thought it was good. Another child who arrived with his field group early in order to set the tables, told me that he had never sat at a table that was set before. (But he clearly liked the idea of setting the table.) One night when a young girl brought her platter back to the kitchen for a re-fill of free-range chicken, brined in kosher salt and baked with rosemary leaves from our garden, she said "I've never had real food before, but you know, I like it!" And recently, one boy asked me "Are you the chef?" and when I said I was, he pointed both thumbs straight up and said, "You're my hero!"

About the author

Greg Atkinson is Chef and Culinary Programs Coordinator at IslandWood. The author of The Northwest Essentials Cookbook and In Season, Culinary Adventures of A San Juan Island Chef, he is a contributing editor to Food Arts Magazine, and his articles about food and cooking appear regularly in The Seattle Times. A Certified Culinary Professional (CCP), Atkinson is a speaker and an instructor at culinary events and cooking demonstrations around the country. This spring he presented a talk on Sustainable Cuisine at the International Association of Culinary Professionals annual conference in Montreal and spoke about restaurant trends in the northwest at the Cascadia Culinary Conference on Whidbey Island. Immediately before coming to IslandWood, Atkinson served for six years as executive chef at Seattle's venerable Canlis restaurant where he received national acclaim for celebrating seasonal and regional foods at one of the nation's most highly acclaimed fine dining establishments. At IslandWood Atkinson celebrates sustainable cuisine, and helps bring greater understanding of how what we eat impacts the world around us. You may email Greg at grega@islandwood.org.

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