I”ve been investigating strange disappearances at the Fort Bragg Food Bank.
Chips. Soda pop. Lemon pies in plastic boxes. At the same time, newcomers like brown rice, yogurt and fresh chard have appeared on the scene, sliding into the places once occupied by the yummy junk foods.
Others beyond this cub reporter have noticed these mysterious vanishings and unexpected appearances.
Picking out lots of fresh carrots and big juicy green Anjou pears, bumpy local apples and very fresh chard, Noah Wotila was all smiles.
“The produce here is great. I love the Food Bank,” he said.
“I get it for my four children and it”s so good for them and for all of us,” he said.
Kids and carrots? Really?
“We juice them,” said Wotila, who grew up in Mendocino. The family mixes carrot juice with other fruits and vegetable juices to make a Food Bank version of the V8.
“There has been a lot more healthy food lately and it”s been great for us.”
In the eight years I have been going through the line with clients at the Food Bank, I”ve gone home with increasingly nutritious food. Who is behind these stealthy changes? I”ve learned there is a conspiracy at work. Executive Director Nancy Severy admits she and warehouse manager Jim DiMauro seek every opportunity to acquire more nutritious foods.
“When we have the choice, we go for the more nutritious. Jim has been increasing the good produce we get from the Redwood Empire Food Bank every year.”
This was needed even more this year so because Safeway, one of the key sources of produce in past years stopped giving it this year, along with other foods not completely packaged.
“We still get a fair amount of foods from Safeway and are appreciative but this was a change we had to deal with,” said Severy. While DiMauro orders the food and directs distribution of foods to all the local smaller food banks, Severy spends a lot of time working on the paperwork needed to work with federal and state governments in 2014.
The Food Bank is getting a $6000 FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Emergency Food and Shelter Program grant for this year to be used to buy extra healthy food. Good food can be cheaper to buy and cheaper and empowering for society. People who eat more nutritious foods have longer work careers, less sick days and less health care costs, many studies have found.
“When the money is used to buy foods like brown rice and dried beans, it goes a long way.” Five years ago the Food Bank acquired a large grant from a federal court settlement that vitamin corporations had to pay for manipulating markets. That money bought enough brown rice for several years. It took me a while to get used to brown rice, which takes longer to cook than white, but is extra yummy when good recipes are used.
Unpolished brown rice is a historically scorned food. In ancient China, polished rice was a status symbol and only poor people ate unpolished brown rice, which has more vitamins and minerals. During a famine, the peasants who had only brown rice were well fed, while aristocrats starved on less nutritious polished rice, according to the legends at least. In the American South, slaves created culinary and healthy masterpieces from weeds like collards, black-eyed peas and okra, which was smuggled from Africa. These foods are now all found on the tables of five star restaurants. But consumers are still drawn to marketing images.
Vegetables that aren”t exactly the same shape or color as those on TV end up rejected by society and its stores. Those Anjou pears were available for Noah Wotila and his family because consumers passed them over for more shapely Bartlett pears. The Anjou gives nothing away in flavor or nutrition.
Society”s demand for foods as perfect in appearance as its celebrities is a big blessing to food banks, but often a curse to those producing the healthiest, freshest and most local produce. Perfect appearing foods may have gotten that way with the help of scary pesticides. Lauren Vier said she likes the Food Bank because she can tell that foods are not genetically modified, pointing to those lumpy local apples.
Young people are compelled by a constant barrage of advertising to eat a narrow range of mostly unhealthy fast foods, snacks and soda. But when they actually eat better foods, they get used to them and enjoy them, studies have shown. Adults too.
Petra Schulte, a nutrition educator for Fort Bragg schools is an important outsider in the Fort Bragg Food Bank conspiracy to improve nutrition. She says odd foods passed over by shoppers are likely to have helpful nutrients that those who eat narrow diets may not be getting.
Aiden Miller, a ninth grader who came with Schulte as part of a state program that is providing garden plants to Food Bank clients, said he grew up eating good food and knows lots of other high schoolers who do too.
“It”s good and it”s good for you,” he said.
I have gone with Schulte several times over the years, the first time being my idea. Since then she has become very active in the Food Bank, most recently bringing high school students, live plants like lettuce and kale. Clients were given help on how to do container gardening.
Schulte was delighted when we found in the produce section more than just green lettuce and cabbage but also red beets, white asparagus, blueberries and golden squash.
“A rainbow of colors like this is a very healthy mixture,” she said.
“Phytochemicals, which are plant chemicals that protect our bodies, determine the color of plant foods. So eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables give us a variety of plant chemicals that protect our bodies from disease,” she said.
“I like that they had vegetables such as winter squash, sweet potatoes, and broccoli sprouts. Some of the other vegetables were older, which reduces their health benefits,” she said.
In eight years of eating and writing Season of Sharing my palette has expanded much more at the Food Bank than during my five years in the Napa Valley, surrounded by all those rich people and fancy restaurants.
I”ve met and tried giant bags of alien looking mushrooms, Romanesque, oca and cardoon. It turns out variety of colors means a variety of vitamins. Each new item of fresh produce you eat, the more you expand good stuff in your body.
Cardoon looks like a rough and oversized clump of celery, but is bitter when eaten raw. Cooked, it tastes like artichokes, but holds the shape and consistency of celery. In my time of eating what the clients at the Food Bank eat, as part of my writing this series, I”ve found true magic in the crock-pot. The “just a bit” beyond ripe foods make some fabulous and always surprising flavor combinations, with a little planning and a pinch of pepper.
Cardoon stands up and tastes sharp even after 12 hours in the crock-pot, yet many shoppers pass up the not so glamorous. But how much healthier do all these veggies make all of us who eat them?
Schulte also pointed out someone could eat a lot of bread, chips and dessert items. A few years ago when I went through with Schulte there was soda in the line. The Food Bank gets it free and the clients love it, but I haven”t seen sugary pop for a while. Schulte is spearheading a community wide “rethink your drink” program and working to keep unhealthy foods off the campus of local schools, after school too.
“I was surprised at the quality and the variety of the fruits and vegetables we saw. It was true that we had to pick through it to find the better quality, but if someone was doing that for their family they could do very well and eat a nutritionally balanced diet from just what the Food Bank had today,” Schulte said.
Schulte has helped the Food Bank select good foods.
“We learn a lot from her about nutrition,” said Severy. The Food Bank tries to get items the clients will actually eat, as well as more nutritious stuff.
“We have been getting this coconut water, she says it”s so much better for us than soft drinks, and a lot of people like it.”
While growing through the line, I did see clients select the coconut water. It”s an acquired taste for sure. I”m not quite enlightened enough yet.
Nancy?
“I drink water, Severy said. “Water and some coffee.”
Today (Thanksgiving) is the biggest day of the year at the Food Bank, although it is closed.
The Tuesday and Wednesday before turkey day features huge crowds and foods nobody would scorn. Each person starts off with a bag of canned foods, including stuffing, gravy, green beans or peas, yams, corn and cranberry sauce. Add cranberry juice, loaves of bread, big sweet potatoes, a head of celery, a bag of apples, a big bag full of potatoes and then, a huge turkey. The intent is to have everybody in Fort Bragg who wants a first class Thanksgiving Dinner to have one.
Season of Sharing
Since the 1996 holiday season, the Fort Bragg Advocate-News and The Mendocino Beacon have raised roughly $322,208 for the Food Bank through the Season of Sharing fund drive. Since 1999, the nonprofit Community Foundation of Mendocino County has administered the drive as a courtesy to the newspapers, which means that every penny donated to the Season of Sharing goes directly to the Food Bank.
“There are many dozens of nonprofit organizations in our area, all very worthy of support, but the Food Bank addresses the most basic problem facing hundreds of individuals and families — hunger,” said Publisher Sharon DiMauro. “The goal is to give the Food Bank money it can use year-round, not just during the holidays. It doesn”t matter a bit whether a person contributes through our fundraiser or directly to the Food Bank, the main thing is to contribute — and if you”re able, to give year-round.”
How to donate
• By check: Make check payable to the Community Foundation of Mendocino County (CFMC) and mail or deliver to the Advocate-News, 450 N. Franklin St., Fort Bragg 95437.
• By credit card: Pay via CFMC”s website, www.communityfound.org, and click on the Season of Sharing image.
The names of donors who contribute through the newspapers will be printed each week, unless they ask to remain anonymous. The drive runs through Dec. 31.
If you have any questions, please call us at 707-964-5642.
Food Bank board member Marty Johnson, or “turkey Marty” gathered donations outside Safeway on Saturday and Harvest Market on Sunday. Each store has an ongoing drive to gather food and donations for the Food Bank at holidays.
