Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin' Mamas by Mark Winne

Author:Mark Winne [Winne, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Social Science, Nature, Environmental Conservation & Protection, Technology & Engineering, Agriculture & Food, Nutrition, Health & Fitness, Medical
ISBN: 0807047333
Publisher: Beacon
Published: 2010-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7. God Didn’t Make Nachos

The scene inside Primera Iglesia Adventista swung erratically between passive confusion and active chaos. As the crowd of women and children began to swell within the unadorned Austin, Texas, church sanctuary, so did the noise level. Young children, too long held captive by their mothers’ firm grips, were temporarily freed to unleash a reign of terror across this little patch of God’s kingdom. The soft Spanish chatter of the adults was soon drowned out by the sound of running, screaming children, punctuated by the crash of metal chairs on concrete floors. The pandemonium was brought to a momentary hiatus by a crying child for whom the play had become too rough, but after a brief scolding, a dusting off, and a kiss from Mama, the child rejoined the gang of tiny desperadoes. As the roar surpassed its previous decibel levels, the mothers appeared unfazed, and the dime-store portrait of Jesus suspended behind the altar seemed to roll its eyes.

Before the turbulence became unmanageable, Joy Casnovsky, the Austin-based Sustainable Food Center’s program director, called out to the day care providers to round up the children and take them to a different room. The food class, known as the Happy Kitchen/la Cocina Alegre™ was about to begin.

Dutifully, the twenty-five or so assembled adult students took their seats. All were Latino, only one was male, and all but three were under forty-five years old. They all came from the lower-income immigrant neighborhood that surrounded the church, an area devoid of decent food stores but rich in junk food outlets. They sat on collapsible metal chairs that only those doing penance for multiple sins should have to endure. The rows formed a series of shallow arcs around a ten-foot-wide cutout in the wall that separated the sanctuary from the church’s kitchen. Three instructors and a couple of their older daughters stood in the kitchen looking through the opening at the audience, who in turn stared back at them as if watching a wide-screen TV.

Maria Tinoco, the lead facilitator and a former student in the class, held up a bowl of sugar and a teaspoon. She began to spoon the sugar into a clear glass container, and as if on cue all twenty-five students began to count along: “Uno, dos, tres . . . nueve, diez, once.” “Once!” shouted Maria, telling everyone that a twelve-ounce can of cola contains eleven teaspoons, or forty-four grams, of pure sugar. Several participants squinched up their noses in disgust. I could feel my own lips purse as my tongue reflexively scrubbed the imagined gunk from the roof of my mouth. While the audience members were generally slimmer than most people I would encounter during my four days in Austin, the fear of diabetes hung like a black shroud over the room. Sugar was public enemy number one.

Paula, a notably svelte woman, told me, “My father has diabetes and most of my family has high cholesterol. Though they are all fat, they don’t want to change.

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