NNLM Discovery | Mindful Eating for the Beloved Community (Audio Described Version)

Imagine living in a tropical paradise, but you can’t afford fresh produce. Imagine importing 97% of your food and being cut off for weeks due to a hurricane. These are real-life food insecurity issues faced by many Americans in the Caribbean.
Non-AD version - • NNLM Discovery | Mindf...
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The NNLM is the outreach arm of the National Library of Medicine with the mission to advance the progress of medicine and improve the public health by providing all U.S. health professionals with equal access to biomedical information and improving the public's access to information to enable them to make informed decisions about their health. The seven Health Sciences Libraries function as the Regional Medical Library (RML) for their respective region, with Region 2 consisting of: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. To learn more about Region 2 visit: www.nnlm.gov/about/regions/reg....
Video transcript:
[Chef Askew] Well, the Virgin Islands is an underserved
community.
It imports almost 98% of its food.
They have food deserts and food swamps.
And there are also diet
related illnesses that are present here.
[Dahl-Smith] The Virgin Islands
has one of the highest morbidity rates
for things
that are really dietary associated.
We have heart disease, obesity is a
problem, diabetes is definitely a problem.
[Chef Motta] It's a beautiful place to live.
But the cost of living is so extreme that
the majority of the population
lives in poverty.
You just don't have a lot of communities
that have access
to healthy,
green, fresh, organic vegetables.
[Chef Askew]
Our grant mission was for mindful
eating for the beloved community
in the Virgin Islands.
Food is absolutely medicine.
So mindful eating
is this concept of integrating mindfulness
and healthy eating habits.
So the activities plan this week
and the first one
was to look at the agriculture
and food system that was present.
What things were working?
What models could be scaled
and replicated.
The second thing is
we had a great opportunity
to do a food education session
and training
with young kids that are being trained
to be health ambassadors.
And then lastly, we were able to actually
share a mindful meal.
We were able to get in the kitchen
and cook.
And so we had this full, long activity
of actually preparing the food
and being able to work with the students
and meeting them where they are
and also break bread
and share this mindful meal together
and talk about food
in a very intentional way.
[Chery]
We believe the young people can be the one
that bring the information
back to the home.
Healthy eating doesn't
mean expensive and Chef Alex
is there to provide a curriculum,
how to preserve, how to conserve,
and how to better prepare, understand
the food that will carry them on
as they get older.
[Chef Askew] So it's our
responsibility to let people know,
Hey, sister.
Hey, brother.
We eat fried food every day, you know?
You know what?
That's really not that great for you.
[Chef Motta] Our culture,
which is so rich,
all stemmed from these islands
being part of the slave trade.
And so here today, 200 years later,
you've still got people
creating those similar recipes
that the slaves would
develop, at the end of the day, after
they pick up the scraps from the masters.
Understanding that you can pivot that
into a more modern way of eating
is very important, especially today.
[Chef Askew] So to receive this NLM grant,
on a professional level, it meant that
we were validated in this work.
So we're hoping that
not only this is a model,
it's a sustainable and replicated model,
and it will have impact
for more and more years to come.
#socialjustice #foodswamps #fooddesert