As part of the Community Nutrition Field Work/Supervised Practice Experience course (NEP 3590), nutrition and exercise physiology and dietetics students implement their community nutrition knowledge by serving at The Food Bank Market, part of The Food Bank for Central & Northeast Missouri. The Food Bank Market’s purpose is to “work alongside our community to meet the nutritional needs of neighbors with dignity and collaborate to empower long-term food security.”
At The Market, neighbors receive a shopping list based on the types of groceries available that week that can be used to make nutritious meals for their families. NEP and dietetics students help sort and bag groceries, host food demonstrations with recipes using ingredients from The Market, create recipe cards and posters related to the recipe, and answer the neighbors’ questions about food and nutrition to provide a broad scope of food and nutrition information through their Market2Meal Program.
“Answering the neighbors’ questions and figuring out how to personalize the recipes and ingredients, even with our general education plan and our poster, has been really helpful to kind of put me on the spot and pull all the information we’ve been taught and use it in a real situation,” said Lucy Schuman, dietetics senior.
Students work at The Food Bank Market with the help and supervision of staff, including John Coleman, the nutrition and education manager, who trains the students how to use the kitchen facilities for demos and follow food safety practices, as well as provides feedback on their nutrition education communication.
“I help provide some guidance on how to make recipes interesting/approachable to our neighbors,” said Coleman. “I would say that the students and I work together to provide the neighbors we serve with nutritious and healthful recipes, but also improve their confidence in the kitchen, by providing recipes that are approachable and do not require much equipment or skill. Additionally, the students provide feedback from the neighbors that ultimately informs how I will approach future food demonstrations. So, I learn from them, just as much as they (hopefully) learn from me.”
This volunteer experience is part of their community nutrition coursework in tailoring nutritional information to different demographic groups of all ages, lifestyles, medical needs and levels of nutritional information and access.
“With each group you have to shift your brain to figure out what is the best way to actually get this information to them, without boring them or having them sit through things and get nothing from it,” said Schuman.
“This class really takes you out of your comfort zone in a good way, because when we decide on this field, most people have an image of who they want to work with, like athletes, pediatrics, disordered eating, and so on,” said Berhorst. “But in this class you get to see every different group of people and learn how to help them in the best way.”
Students must also learn how to adapt available ingredients to fill the nutrition needs of The Food Bank’s neighbors; for example, focusing on using legumes as a protein source when meat may not be available at The Market.
“Something that we as dietitians and nutritionists are trying to make better long term is that they have access to The Food Bank, but you can’t always guarantee what’s going to be in there,” said Haley Berhorst, senior in nutrition and exercise physiology with a food and nutrition emphasis. “So when we pick out recipes, we have to think about that and how to be adaptable to different ingredients that may or may not be available in The Food Bank that week.”
Recently, students did a food demonstration to make stir fry using snap peas, carrots, bell peppers and a peanut butter soy sauce.
“I love surprising whoever we’re serving, when they say they don’t like a certain ingredient, and getting them to try the recipe and realizing that they do like the ingredient when it’s prepared like that,” said Berhorst. “‘Oh, this is actually good!’ is my favorite compliment. We’re in a field that involves food and so we all enjoy cooking and creating the recipes and so it’s super exciting to share that passion and to get other people excited and motivated to try it themselves. That’s why we do this.”
“Their time in The Market makes an impact,” said Coleman. “It impacts our neighbors by showing them ways to eat healthy on a budget; it also shows them how to make nutritious meals with foods they may not cook with often or are hesitant to try. The students assist The Food Bank by helping us advance our goal of improving food and nutrition security.”