“Play with your food!” Chef David Leathers enthuses in his big ole Southern drawl. “It’s fun!” He should know, being one of the foremost fruit and vegetable carvers in the world. Within the body of the man whose hands create banana octopi and squash monkeys—and, yes, Elvis-adorned watermelons—beats the heart of a passionate foe of childhood obesity. “It’s killing children. It may not kill them now, but it will later.”
It is estimated that 19 percent of children are now considered overweight, and studies say that nearly 50 percent of children in North America will be overweight by the year 2010. Childhood obesity creates chronic problems into adulthood—including diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. But the situation is far from hopeless.
Leathers has collaborated with Chefs for Humanity, a nonprofit organization founded in response to the movement begun in 2004 by Iron Chef Cat Cora. Chefs for Humanity provides nutrition education, hunger relief, and emergency and humanitarian aid to reduce hunger around the world. Chef Cora, along with her team of culinary professionals (and many volunteers with big hearts), served thousands of meals in Gulfport, Mississippi in 2006; the organization is currently developing strategies to rejuvenate hurricane-devastated Wawa Boom, a village in Nicaragua. Chefs for Humanity will be also be going to Zambia this year to assist a region that has suffered the ravages of floods in addition to its deep, endemic poverty.
There is a pretty impressive council of celeb chefs behind Chefs for Humanity—Ming Tsai of Simply Ming, Rick Bayless, Brian Duffy, Bradford Thompson, Robert Irvine of Dinner Impossible, and Bobby Flay of well, everything, to name just a few.
Chefs for Humanity has teamed up with WECAN! (Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition), an organization created by the National Institute of Health, and CMOM (Children’s Museum of Manhattan) to create the Every Kid CAN! Program, which develops fun and innovative strategies for getting kids involved with their own food choices. This program’s purpose is culinary education; the agenda is very hands-on, incorporating “unusual food tasting” complete with spit-towel, carving, and of course cooking! Kids and their parents learn to make grilled mini-paninis (choosing their own meats and veggies for grilling), pizzettes, salads, and whole-wheat banana pancakes.
PREVIOUS PAGE
