Blending Nutrition and Fun at Vincent Brown!
How are smoothies and unicorns similar?
This was the question Helene Miller, director of the Partnership, posed to a group of kids at the Vincent Brown Recreation Center Tuesday morning at the Partnership’s first Blender Bike Madness event of the summer. Before her inquiry, Helene had explained that the stationary bicycle, set up in the Rec Center’s shaded garden, blends smoothies through the power produced by pedaling. In response to puzzled looks from the 30-or-so faces of the youths seated before her, Helene answered her own question: “Unicorns are magical, and smoothies have magical ingredients that are good for your body and brain!”
The previous morning I attended a training session for Summer Meals program staff (the government-sponsored program that provides free lunches in Providence parks to anyone under 18 during the summer). This training happened to provide some important context for last Tuesday’s event. Check out these surprising facts I learned: over 26,000 children in Providence are considered “food insecure” (defined by the USDA as a lack of access to enough healthy food) and only around 30% of children in the U.S. are eating vegetables on a daily basis, with most of that percentage coming from french fries, which, while technically a vegetable, are hardly a healthy option!
An array of fruits, vegetables, and juices was spread out on a picnic table for the kids to choose from to create different smoothie combinations. In addition, paper bowls containing “samples” of fresh snap peas, kale, beet leaves, spinach, and chard (donated from the sharing garden at Billy Taylor Park) allowed them to taste vegetables that were previously unfamiliar to them as they waited for a go at the pedals. It was mostly an adventurous group, as many of the kids lined up to try the strange new produce. Those who didn’t like what they tasted were able to spit it out in the “spittoon” (a garbage can placed next to the picnic table). As the kids drank the smoothies, we went around with a survey that asked questions like: how many of them would drink the smoothie again, whether they had tried a new fruit or vegetable today, and if they would be willing to try a new fruit or vegetable again. Through these surveys, the Partnership is hoping to collect data on the blender bike’s success in terms of the program’s ultimate goal of health education.
The Blender Bike Madness program got its start as a project by Kobe Kase, three years ago. In addition to Kobe’s Bar Mitzvah money that got the blender bike up and running, Social Enterprise Greenhouse originally provided funding in 2014 to support the program’s first year. More recently, funding from the Tropical Smoothie Cafe and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island allowed for upgraded state of the art blender bike equipment including a new blender, bike stand, and refurbished bike for this summer. The Partnership also just applied for two grants to receive additional funds for the program, furthering the Bike Blender’s incorporation as an important component of Providence’s health agenda.
I think that this first event of the summer, in light of the new funding, kicked off a successful nutritional program for the city’s youth. Given what I learned Monday about youth access to healthy food, it was heartening to watch the children at Vincent Brown vie to take home leftover bags of spinach, enjoy the combination of snap peas and cherries in a smoothie, and take pride in trying new foods. The Blender Bike event felt like a creative and tangible way for the solutions to some of these issues to take root. In a post-event discussion with the team, the Partnership’s philosophy on learning was highlighted when Helene said, “kids don’t have enough opportunities to be silly.” I realized that this mindset of letting kids be kids, while also teaching them concrete food skills, will be the basis of positive outcomes for the Bike Blender program.
Contact Helene Miller to request a Bike Blender Madness event in your park this summer!
blog written by: Gabby Santas