Food Renegade Kristen Michaelis on Teaching Kids About Nutrition

How are you educating your kids about real food? Are they learning what the USDA wants them to learn at school? Or are they learning the truth about food, nutrition, and sustainable agriculture?

My friend and fellow blogger, Kristen Michaelis of the popular Food Renegade blog, is teaching Real Food Nutrition & Health, an online class for kids 12 and over.

Click here to learn more about the class and see the class schedule.

I asked Kristen some questions about the class and what inspired her to teach it. I think you will enjoy reading her responses as much as I did. She is so passionate about real food, and it’s inspiring to see what just one person is doing to make a difference.

1. What made you decide to teach this class?
I was sitting with a friend eating dinner, and she and her kids and I were all sitting around discussing the ins and outs of why refined sweeteners are bad for you.

She leaned over to me and said, “You know what, Kristen? You really should consider writing a book or teaching a class on this subject. My kids don’t listen to me when I tell them all this, but they’re listening to you. There’s nothing out there like this for them. Nothing. You’d be filling a BIG gap.”

As I thought about her idea, I realized that tackling this project actually sounded like fun to me. I wanted to be the person who filled this gap. I love teaching. I love writing. I love real food nutrition. I could do all these things I love, all these things I’m passionate about. Who wouldn’t jump on that chance?

2. What do you think is lacking in kids’ education about nutrition and health?
For starters, most kids (if they’re taught about nutrition at all) are taught based on the USDA’s food pyramid. I know they’ve replaced that with “My Plate” now, but it’s still the same poor dietary advice. The USDA recommends you eat a whole bunch of processed, artificially low-fat foods like skim milk, low-fat sour cream, and low-fat margarine. They recommend you eat a lot of grains, and only specify that half of them should be whole. They recommend you switch from real, old-fashioned animal and vegetable fats and oils to the industrially-processed and refined seed-based oils like corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, and the like. They draw no distinction between an egg from a hen raised on green pasture and an egg from a hen crammed inside a tiny cage which was fed low doses of antimicrobial drugs its whole life — despite all the evidence demonstrating the different nutritional value of these two foods. The list can go on for a long time.

The main point here, though, seems to be that the USDA is promoting the products of industrial agriculture when it makes its nutritional recommendations to the public. At best, that’s an unsustainable system dependent on vanishing fossil fuels. At worst, it’s a system that is undermining public health as we stray further and further from traditional foods which have been grown, prepared, and eaten according to the ways of our ancestors.

3. What are some of the benefits of taking the time to teach your kids about nutrition and health? What have you experienced with your own children or children you know?
Well, the benefits should be obvious. We’re passing on our hard-won knowledge to the next generation, teaching them to think for themselves, to distrust conventional wisdom, to be thoughtful about how they treat their bodies and steward the land. Not only is it better for their health & well-being, but it’s also better for their souls.

Prioritizing real food nutrition gives kids a larger perspective. They can feel plugged into something that goes beyond their self — a movement to take better care of the earth, to improve public health, to treat animals humanely, to protect family farms. They can feel like their decisions actually matter, actually make a difference.

4. How did you find your way into the “real food” movement? What compelled you to follow this path?
Not long after my first child was born (I have three), a friend showed me the documentary The Future of Food. It was the first time I’d ever thought about GMOs or our food supply, the first time I’d ever considered that the “organic” label meant more than just “pesticide-free.”

From there I started learning about traditional foods, including raw milk. I started devouring anything and everything I could read on the subject of real food. I started making changes, slow changes, one step at a time to our family’s diet.

5. What would you say are the top 3 things to teach your kids about nutrition and health?
I think the most important things are the things that would make the most dramatic impact on their future health. So, with that in mind, the first would be to switch from modern, refined, industrial fats like yellow, seed-based cooking oils and trans fats to healthy, natural, ancient fats like animal fats, olive oil, and coconut oil (among others). The second would be to avoid refined sugars and grains. And the third would be to get traditionally healthy foods into your body — like fermented foods, bone broths, and organ meats.

6. What do you enjoy most about teaching the class?
Feeling like I’m making a difference. I love getting positive feedback from my students.

7. Can you share with us some positive experiences that you had teaching the class? Any good testimonials?
During one of my terms, a mother and daughter duo chose to take the class together. Each week they emailed me photos of them doing that week’s assignment.

So, I got to see pictures of them touring a local farm, trying out their first batch of sauerkraut, making a loaf of sourdough bread, and more. The pictures were so honest and real life, so full of fun. It was inspiring to get a peek into their lives and see how they were experimenting and changing their food habits.

When it was all done they wrote a moving thank you letter to me, and I couldn’t help but thinking “No. It’s me who owes you thanks. I loved looking into your life with you over the past few months It’s the sort of thing that makes it all so worthwhile!”

8. If you could change just one thing about our food system, what would it be (I know, just one!)?
Just one? Yikes. I think I would like to see us switch to a more localized food economy. It would kill a lot of birds with one stone, ensuring better animal husbandry, better stewardship of the land, and more accountability between producers and consumers. That alone would do worlds of good for the public health and for the environment.

Watch the Video

Here’s a short video about Kristen’s class for kids:

Click here to learn more about the class and see the class schedule.

Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5