Battle Creek Family YMCA changes palates one vegetable at a time

June 24, 2022

Summary: Residents of Battle Creek have access to several SNAP-Ed programs to help them access fresh, healthy food, ranging from friendly “Food Navigators” at their local farmers market to healthy produce bags for students.

Challenge: Lack of access to fresh fruits and vegetables is one of the greatest challenges in the Battle Creek community. Many families note that there are few grocery stores offering fresh produce nearby. And with tight food budgets, they also express caution about spending their limited dollars on fresh foods they aren’t familiar with preparing — especially produce that could spoil more quickly than shelf-stable items. Many of them think of fresh, healthy food as more expensive.

Solution: To serve the community and improve access to fresh, healthy food, the Battle Creek Family YMCA has implemented several programs made possible through Michigan Fitness Foundation (MFF) SNAP-Ed funding. One example is MFF’s Farmers Market Food Navigator (FMFN) program, which the Battle Creek Y implements at the Battle Creek Farmers Market.

MFF provides the Battle Creek Y with grant funding to hire a Food Navigator to deliver the FMFN program. The program is designed for Food Navigators to help shoppers understand how to use the food assistance programs available at market, like SNAP and WIC. They also provide personalized market tours, introductions to the farmers, seasonal recipes, and tips about how to prepare, cook, and store the produce shoppers purchase at the market. To familiarize shoppers with and encourage them to try fruits and vegetables when they are in season at the market, Food Navigators share Michigan Harvest of the Month™ recipes and often provide a tasting of the featured recipe. This approach acquaints shoppers with foods they may have never tried or struggle with knowing how to prepare. All of these strategies are designed to serve families, build their confidence in buying and using fresh produce, help them make nutritious choices, and stretch their food budget.

The Battle Creek Y also uses the SNAP-Ed Pick a better snack™ (PABS) program to introduce children in kindergarten through third grade to fresh fruits and vegetables. PABS also has a component called Play Your Way One Hour a Day to inspire kids to be active 60 minutes a day.

Chrissie Szarejko serves as the SNAP-Ed nutrition educator for the Battle Creek Y. She collaborates with teachers, administrators, food service staff, and local organizations to give students and their families the know-how needed to eat healthy for a lifetime. Nutrition education lessons include a hands-on exploratory activity to introduce the featured fruit or vegetable, which can also connect children to horticulture or other science such as the science of taste.

To reinforce the PABS lessons, school food service staff feature the fruits and vegetables from the lessons in school lunches. Through a collaboration with the Fire Hub Restaurant, students are also sent home with produce, known as red bags, that include the fruits and vegetables they tasted during their lessons. The Fire Hub is owned and operated by the FireKeepers Casino, and the restaurant’s mission is to support access to good, healthy food in the Battle Creek community by partnering with the Food Bank of South Central Michigan. Some of the Fire Hub produce is grown in the restaurant’s greenhouse, which, pre-pandemic, also stocked free salad bars at the schools. Fire Hub’s red bags are provided to Battle Creek Public School students in all grades once a month – about 600 bags per week on a rotating basis. The kids enjoy sharing the foods they learned about with their families – and parents are happily surprised to see kids acquire a taste for healthier foods.

The Battle Creek Y also started a new community collaboration called the Healthy Corner Store Initiative. Because so many families rely on corner stores for groceries and students frequent them on their way home from school, corner stores can contribute to the community by providing greater access to healthy foods, such as fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy products, and whole grain snacks. For this initiative, the Battle Creek Y worked with a corner store that high school students frequented before and after school to buy snacks. The corner store owner agreed to pilot Stock Healthy, Shop Healthy, a community-based SNAP-Ed program that can improve access to healthy foods by working with small food retailers to address access barriers as well as supply and demand for healthy foods. Some of the strategies include components on how to partner with and promote a corner store, provide community outreach and education, and build community demand for healthy foods.

“Expanding the palates of young kids – it’s just an impressionable age. We get them to try that fresh food, develop a comfort with – a taste for – and a knowledge of that food. Even if their family isn’t always in a position to immediately buy it, they had it in their SNAP-Ed lesson. It was in their red bag. They took it home. That all helps to support lifelong eating behaviors,” said Battle Creek YMCA Community Outreach Director Kelly Boles Chapman.

Sustaining success: To keep the momentum going and expand the program, the Battle Creek Y has begun working with a second corner store using Stock Healthy, Shop Healthy. This work is aligned to SNAP-Ed evaluation indicators ST5, ST6, ST7, ST8 a-d, MT5, LT5.

Through their SNAP-Ed programs, the Battle Creek Y is addressing barriers to generate purposeful outcomes related to food autonomy. Through PABS in the schools, they are providing nutrition education to the students, who in turn bring that learning home. And through engaging the students and their families, the Battle Creek Y promotes the local farmers market as a resource for fresh food. The Food Navigator at the Farmers Market is seeing the students and their families drop by for nutrition resources and tips. The older students are making healthier choices and benefiting from the changes made at the corner store. While this work is layered and takes time and patience, they are using sustainable strategies to create a healthier community.