From left: Meghan Groome, Ph.D. (CEO of Teens for Food Justice); JASA senior residents and Advisory Board members Dolores Gaither and Jamilah Wright; Tania Collazo (Senior Director of Nutrition Services at JASA); and Raymond Daughtry (President of JASA’s Advisory Board).
What Far Rockaway’s Older Adults Want Teens to Know About Food
By: Pamela Honey
Older adults from the Jewish Association Serving the Aging (JASA) Advisory Board said they want to teach young people in their community what good food is. They spoke on a panel at the fourth Far Rockaway Food Systems Networking Breakfast, held Aug. 4 at the JASA Brookdale Village Older Adult Center. Teens for Food Justice (TFFJ) convenes the breakfast series, which brings together people from healthcare, education, government, business, and community organizations working on food insecurity in Far Rockaway. Participants have the opportunity to share what each is doing, avoid duplicating that work, and find new solutions together. Meghan Groome, Ph.D., CEO of TFFJ, said the goal is to bring these groups “together in the same room to talk honestly about what’s going on here in Far Rockaway.”
JASA distributes produce from TFFJ’s farm at The Scholars’ Academy (Scholars) to older adults, and pairs it with nutrition education from Plant Powered Metro New York. Older adults from JASA have also visited this farm, where students showed them how they seed, transplant, and harvest crops. At TFFJ school farms, students cook with what they grow and learn how food choices affect their health, and Groome said culinary programs are TFFJ’s most popular.
What older adults see
Panelists included JASA Advisory Board members Raymond Daughtry, Dolores Gaither, and Jamilah Wright. They spoke broadly about young people in Far Rockaway, not only TFFJ students.
Young people grow up on fast food, panelists said, because it’s quick and no one has taught them the difference. One panelist described grandchildren raised on McDonald’s who now feed their own children the same way. Many young people don’t recognize basic vegetables like tomatoes and zucchini, they said, and much of what they eat comes from a can or a sealed plastic bag.
Older adults should teach them, panelists offered. “They need to be taught by us older people, seniors, what good food really is,” one Advisory Board member said.
What older adults know
Panelists also shared practical advice and insights gained from experience. One said shoppers should check the expiration date on marked-down items, since some stores lower prices only right before items expire.
Gaither, who has lived in Far Rockaway for almost five years, said prices at the store closest to her are too high. She now walks about six blocks to a store with better prices and better produce, and brings her 99-year-old neighbor, who Gaither said is grateful to have been shown the store.
Groome said young people need this kind of knowledge too. She named three important skills: learning to cook, finding good ingredients, and shopping around, including checking expiration dates.
A multigenerational idea
Tania Collazo, Senior Director of Nutrition Services at JASA, said TFFJ’s farm work has changed how students relate to older adults. “[Students] see the older adults in a different way,” she said. “They communicate with them in a different way.”
Collazo proposed “having a panel like this at some point with the older adults in the community and our teens.” A panelist echoed Collazo’s idea and suggested that young people and older adults cook together. Food sovereignty depends on knowing what good food is and where to find it. In Far Rockaway, much of that knowledge lives with older adults, and the young people who need it live nearby. The panelists made clear they’re ready to pass it on.❦
Pamela Honey is the Communications & Content Coordinator at Teens for Food Justice.
