Fight Child Malnutrition in Rural Guatemala

“No matter how well we eat, no matter how much healthy food we cook, if we don’t practice good hygiene in the kitchen we can still get sick from what we eat.” Sandy Mendoza is Pueblo a Pueblo’s nutrition educator, and she recently wrapped up this year’s grand tour: fifteen trainings in five schools over the course of three months. She led trainings for 161 mothers and children, who cooked eight different recipes over the course of the summer. The theme of the last set of trainings was kitchen hygiene, a topic Sandy finds both vitally important and also overlooked within nutrition education.

One of those trainings took place at Tzanchaj Primary School, which sits a short distance from the center of Santiago Atitlán, with a group of mothers whose children attend the school. After unloading bags bursting with fresh produce and other ingredients, Sandy began the training with a short presentation about kitchen hygiene. She showed them images representing what not to do while preparing food and suggested what they should do instead. Rather than sneezing into your hands, she explained, it’s better to sneeze into your elbow so that you don’t spread germs when you use your hands to cook. She recommended that the women tie back their hair well so that it cannot fall into the food, and that they remove jewelry from their hands and wrists before cooking. She also pointed out that tasting spoons should not be placed back into the pot to stir food; rather, it is safer to place a bit of food into one’s hand in order to taste it, or wash the spoon first.

Above all, Sandy says, she wants to encourage training participants to be more organized in the kitchen—to wash dishes right away rather than letting them pile up, to keep surfaces clean, and to avoid putting dirty utensils into the food they prepare. “Most of us do some of these things at home,” she says, referring to the bad habits she tries to correct among participants. “But then we say, ‘That food made me sick.’ We have to think of why that might be, and choose to practice good hygiene instead!”

On the menu during the August trainings was pasta with chicken, broccoli, and garlic and a lentil salad with chopped spinach. “Kids will say they don’t like garlic, they might say it makes them sick,” Sandy told the women, “but once they taste it and get used to it, they’ll love it.” The women chatted as they cleaned and chopped vegetables and mixed the dishes together. Once the food was done, they each filled up containers of pasta and salad to take home to their families for dinner.

Sandy’s grand 2018 tour may have come to a close, but she’ll be back—she will soon begin planning for next year’s trainings, including designing brand new menus which will introduce participants to brand new ingredients. In the meantime, chicken-broccoli pasta may very well be on the menu in the homes of Tzanchaj Primary School's students...

Links:

• School Nutrition at Pueblo a Pueblo

Pueblo a Pueblo nutrition educator Sandy Mendoza has been hard at work, and so have her students. Sandy teaches cooking classes in five different schools each year. Each class consists of fourth, fifth, or sixth graders...and their moms!

Sandy explains, “The nutrition training program grew out of something we noticed in our school garden program a few years ago: there were many vegetables that no one harvested!” After asking around, Sandy realized that families did not know how to prepare these vegetables. Sandy’s cooking classes are designed to introduce students and their mothers to new vegetables - why they are important to a balanced diet and how to cook them. “What I do is show my students how to incorporate new ingredients into recipes they’re already familiar with,” she explains. “There are lots of easy ways to get kids to eat new vegetables!”

Each of Sandy’s classes begins with a nutrition lesson. Sandy starts by asking her students to fill in a diagram of the “olla familiar” - the Guatemalan equivalent of the food pyramid - to reflect the way they eat at home. “It serves as a sort of diagnostic exercise,” she notes. “Many times it is clear that mothers aren’t aware of how large a role vegetables should play in their family’s diet.”

Sandy then introduced the ingredient of the day: in this case, spinach!  At each of the five schools, Sandy showed participants to make stuffed spinach fritters. The participants stuffed theirs with cheese, but this is a dish they can also fill with shredded meat or any other vegetables when they recreate it at home - the possibilities are endless! The class also made a lentil-based salad full of chopped veggies and “Hawaiian-style” pasta (a pasta salad with ham and pineapple). While plenty of participants had their doubts about this last flavor combination, the whole meal was a hit.

Sandy is always happy to see returning participants give new students tips. “They say, ‘I learned this last year - let me help you,’” she explains. To Sandy, this is a sign that her classes are having an impact. Her students leave with knowledge that lasts, inspired to bring what they’ve learned home to their own kitchens. Thank you for supporting Sandy and Pueblo a Pueblo as we empower two generations of home chefs to cook healthier food for healthier families!