Gardening workshop welcomes new community partners!

ARISE staff, parents, and neighbors came out for a free workshop at the Sankofa Learning Garden this Wednesday afternoon. The workshop was led by experienced gardener Pam Broom. The information at the event ranged from planting beds out of ground, how to transplant plant starts, and getting involved with the community partner spaces. Workshop members planted garlic, lemon mint, and various other herbs. Attendees left the event with some plant giveaways and a new earned knowledge of gardening! Check out some pictures of workshop attendees gardening.  Sankofa is excited to welcome our new friends and community partners to the space.

Our Lead Gardener Pam Broom kicks off the garden workshop

ARISE Staff and neighbors listen as Pam talks about planting in raised beds. 

Christopher Ingham, Special Education Teacher at ARISE, helps Pam plant herbs. 

Ms. Morris, Kindergarten Teacher, plants the final herbs. 

Steffany Bernstein- Pratt, neighbor,  plants garlic bulbs.

HEAL Project Celebrates National Nutrition Month

In honor of National Nutrition Month, Sankofa's HEAL enrichment class and after-school club have been focusing on nutrition awareness and ways for students to improve nutrition in their own lives. By providing students at a young age with the knowledge and tools they need to make healthy choices, we believe they will be more likely to make those choices throughout the life-cycle.

Our most recent classes have been about the food groups and sugar content in beverages. We utilized MyPlate (shown below) as a tool to demonstrate how students should be eating. There was a focus on eating more fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. These three food groups should comprise most of your plate. Students learned about the process of refining grains and the nutrients which are lost during processing (ie. fiber, vitamins, and minerals).  For this reason it's crucial to eat your grains in their whole form (oatmeal, brown rice, quinoa) or eat products made from whole grains (whole wheat bread, whole wheat pasta) for the best nutrition. We discussed different protein and calcium sources from both plants and animals. Ample protein can come from legumes (beans + lentils), nuts, and seeds, as well as animals. Dairy is a recommended part of the diet for the calcium it contains. Dark leafy vegetables (kale, broccoli, spinach) and soy products are also great sources of bone-strengthening calcium.

Sourced from: http://www.choosemyplate.gov/

To bring National Nutrition Month to a close, we had a Smoothie Day with the enrichment students. Prior to this class, the students learned about the high amounts of sugar in commonly consumed beverages. Highly sweetened beverages include soft drinks, most iced teas, sports drinks (Gatorade), energy drinks (Red Bull), and juice that isn't 100% fruit juice.

To show the students how to choose a healthier alternative, we helped them create one. The class was first divided into two teams.







Each team was provided with healthy ingredients from which they could choose to add to their smoothie. There were strawberries, blueberries, and bananas for them to choose from. Ice and 100% cranberry juice were also added to the smoothies to cool down the drink and add some liquid.

Bright red smoothie from the strawberry group

Deep red smoothie from the blueberry group

National Nutrition Month Fruit Smoothie

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup 100% cranberry juice
• 2 cups frozen strawberries (or frozen blueberries)
• 2 bananas, peeled
• 1/2 cup ice

Directions: 

• Add juice, strawberries, bananas, and ice to a blender. Blend until smooth.

Lots of fruit about to be blended

The final product about to be enjoyed!

Happy National Nutrition Month! 

Composting Part 1 of 2: What is it and Why do it?

What is Compost?

Compost is simply the end result of the "composting" process. Food scraps, that otherwise would end up in the garbage, are set aside to decompose with the help of worms. Although there are other methods, vermicomposting (using worms) is the most common and very simple. The worms break down food scraps, creating a rich nutrient-packed garden soil called humus aka compost. 

With your resulting compost, you can spread it around plants in your backyard or garden. You're plants will thank you by growing stronger and healthier. 

Happily nourished kale growing in the Sankofa garden

Why is it important?

When you compost food scraps, you're making use and taking full advantage of purchased food. Instead of adding banana peels, apple cores, and used coffee grounds to an already overburdened landfill, you can return the nutrients they contain to the soil in your backyard.

Believe it or not the largest percentage of garbage is Food Waste!
It's not plastic, or paper, or glass, but our vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, and banana peels. 

Chart from: www.epa.gov

According to the EPA. "in 2012 alone more than 36 million tons of food waste was generated, with only 5% diverted from landfills and incinerators for composting".

You may be thinking, "food will decompose in the landfill!". You're right but the process is different and takes much longer as food gets buried under plastic bags and other trash. In a landfill food rots instead of being decomposed by worms. This rotting becomes a major source of methane (ie. a contributor to global warming). Composting on the other hand returns nutrients from food to the soil to grow more food, such as the soon to be strawberries below.

Soon to be strawberries in one of Sankofa's gardens

Five ways soil benefits from compost

1. Less store-bought (potentially chemical-filled) fertilizer needed
2. Less run-off (compost acts as a mulch)
3. Added soil structure 
4. Increased drought resistance
5. Potential higher yield and cost savings

Tune in next week for part 2: how to compost

What's in a Food Label?

Food Labels

Although often overlooked, food labels are very important and provide useful information to the consumer. They tell us what ingredients are in the product we're eating, as well as the amount of specific nutrients the item contains. While most of us never look at them, we think you should give them a glance.

So, what you should look for in a Food Label ? 

1.  Ingredient List

• Ingredients are listed in descending order (1st ingredient is the most prevalent)
• Common allergens are also listed on this section. Are you allergic to milk, wheat or nuts ? Its compulsory that products let the consumer know about known allergens. 
• Keep away from products that have more than ten ingredients. This means that the product is highly processed. 

2. Nutrition Fact Panel

In the nutrition fact panel  you will find serving size, number of servings, calories per serving, total fat, sodium, total carbohydrate, and protein 

Look at the serving size: All of the nutrition information listed is based on the serving size presented in the top section. Therefore, if you eat more or less the numbers listed on the label will change.

Check calories : Calories provide a measure of how much energy you get from a serving of this food.

In general, for a 2,000 calorie diet :
- 40 calories per serving is considered low

- 100 calories per serving is considered moderate
- 400 calories or more per serving is considered high

Limit these :   Look for foods low in saturated and trans fats, cholesterol and sodium as they may increase your risk of certain chronic diseases, cancer or high blood pressure. Most of the fats you eat should be polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, those found in fish, nuts, and vegetable oils.

Sugar : Foods with added sugars provide calories, but few essential nutrients. Make sure that added sugars are not listed as one of the first few ingredients. Other names for sugars include: corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice concentrate, maltose, dextrose, sucrose, honey, and maple syrup.

Get enough of these : Make sure you get 100 percent of the fiber, vitamins and other nutrients you need every day. These vitamins and mineral – calcium, fiber, protein, iron and vitamin A and C are essential to a healthy body! Eating enough of these nutrients can improve your health and help reduce the risk of some diseases and conditions.

3. Percent Daily Values (%DV)

The % DV section tells you the percent of each nutrient in a single serving, in terms of the daily recommended amount. As a general rule if a Daily Value is 5% or less is considered low. If a value is 20 % or more is high.

Top things to look for on a label:

• Look for products with 10 or fewer ingredients

• If sugar is listed as one of the first ingredients the item is high in sugar and you probably shouldn't eat it or eat it in moderation 

• Generally, 5% DV or less is low, and 20% DV or more is considered high

• Keep saturated fats, sodium, trans fat and cholesterol low as they may increase your risk of certain chronic diseases, cancer or high blood pressure.

Sources:
American Health Association
US Food and Drug Administration

Wishing you a happy healthy Mardi Gras!

Learning Heart Health with HEAL Students

This morning ARISE academy's enrichment class of 5th and 6th graders learned about heart health. Being that February is American Heart Month we invited Dr. Daphne Ferdinand, Executive Director of Healthy Heart Community Prevention Project, to teach children how the heart really works.

She began the "How to be Heart Smart" class by introducing students to the heart as an organ. Students held up their fists to gauge how large the heart is, they placed a hand on their chest to feel their hearts beat, and repeated heart terminology such as "cardiovascular". Dr. Ferdinand wanted the children to become familiar with and recognize words that are frequently used to describe the heart. She went on to explain arteries, veins, chambers, and valves. Diagrams of the heart enabled the children to see just what the vital organ looks like and the path in which blood flows.

After describing cardiovascular disease (ie. heart disease), Dr. Ferdinand prompted the students to think about how this disease could affect each one of them. She asked them to recall someone in their family with the disease. Many of them could. She also asked what they thought it felt like to have a heart attack. Responses included, "It's really hard to breathe", "There's a really bad pain in your heart", and "You could almost die."A drawing of a plaque- filled artery was presented to illustrate why a heart attack occurs. One student commented, "It looks like something's stuck in there." She was exactly right. As plaque builds up, less and less blood (and oxygen) can pass through the arteries. When the artery becomes completely blocked off, part of the muscle dies and a heart attack occurs.

Some great questions were posed by the students. Alexis asked how heartburn was related to the topic being discussed. Dr. Ferdinand explained that heartburn actually has nothing to do with the heart, but rather a re-flux of food/gastric juice from the stomach into the esophagus. It's called heartburn because the sensation is generally felt near the heart.

The "lecture" portion of the class ended with an explanation of risk factors and means of prevention. Un-modifiable risk factors, such as age, gender, and family history, are just some of the factors to be aware of. Thankfully, modifiable risk factors are plentiful and are things that we have the ability to change. These risk factors include: high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, smoking, being overweight or obese, diabetes, and being inactive. Consuming more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains was emphasized as means of prevention. There was also a large focus on exercise and drinking more water instead of sugary beverages.

The more interactive portion of the class involved students dividing into groups and listening to each others' heartbeats using stethoscopes.

 

The heart health message will continue this afternoon in the HEAL club, as the students create a heart- healthy fruit smoothie!

6 Fun Facts About the Heart:

1. The word coronary means "crown", hence the coronary arteries crown over the heart.

2. Aerobic exercise (aka. cardio) is a form of exercise that increases heart rate, therefore working the heart muscle.
                                        
3. "Heartburn" has nothing to do with the heart, rather the digestive system.

4. The heart beats on average 100,000 times per day.

5. Each year almost 1 million people have heart attacks in the United States alone.

6. Heart disease is the number 1 killer of Americans each year.

Welcome to Sankofa Speaks Blog

"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world."  - Harriet Tubman.  Sankofa Speaks, the new Sankofa blog space will include diverse community perspectives on health and provide a platform for Sankofa HEAL students to share the work they are doing with the Mobile Market and Learning Gardens. This blog will be a space for HEAL students to both learn and share information, and speak on issues that are important to their development and self-empowerment as leaders in our community. Additionally, the blog will promote health and wellness by sharing healthy cooking recipes, link to information on nutrition and health, and provide current updates on the Sankofa Mobile Market. Please join us at Sankofa Speaks to work with us to positively impact our lives and work with us to bring our dreams to reality as the creators of our future. 

Warmly,

Rashida Ferdinand

Founder and Executive Director

Sankofa Community Development Corporation