Dine Downtown Restaurant Week in Sacramento is over, but the impact of the event will be felt for years to come.
One dollar from every meal served at one of the 32 participating restaurants goes towards The Food Literacy Center in Sacramento, which inspires kids to eat their vegetables and teaches low income elementary school students ways to improve their health with cooking and nutrition.
“We have a 40 percent childhood obesity rate in Sacramento and one in 3 kids has type two diabetes which is the preventable kind,” Food Literacy Center founder Amber Stott said.
Once a week, for 14 weeks, Stott and her food literacy team visits area schools and introduce a different fruit or vegetable to the students.
“We get really excited and we use the same techniques that junk food companies have used to get kids excited — using joy and enthusiasm,” Stott said. “Imagine that with broccoli and vegetables. We have a cheer, we do a drum roll, and we just model it.”
The food literacy program currently works with 12 schools in Sacramento every week reaching 1200 kids.
“We hope we can get kids eating vegetables, but we know that only four percent of kids across the country eat enough of their vegetables, so it’s critical that we reach them at the earliest stage possible before they’ve developed their eating habits,” Stott said. “We learn [not to like things] from adults, right? So we reverse that and we’re the adults that come in and help you learn to love vegetables.”