While abroad in Argentina, senior Libby Bacher’s advisor recommended she apply for the CoBank fellow position at the Campus Kitchen at Elon University, a service organization that collects unused food, prepares meals and delivers them to the Burlington community. Interested in nutrition,
she applied.

Bacher didn’t end up getting the job, but instead a new role was created — Nutrition Leader.

Educating the community

The Nutrition Leader works with the CoBank position, who focuses more on getting grants and planning deliveries, to plan nutrition presentations every month at two senior centers: John Kernodle and the Graham Center for Recreation.

“When I interviewed, I think they already had a person for the CoBank in mind and they hadn’t really had anyone interested in nutrition apply before,” Bacher said. “As we were talking about it, I think they realized it would be helpful to have someone because the presentation can be overwhelming without the nutrition knowledge.”

Together they present simple nutrition concepts based on a mix of topics Bacher think are trending and backs them up using Elon’s databases while relating it to the food Campus Kitchen delivers. For example, in one of her first presentations was on local and seasonal produce where she explained the benefits of locally sourced food and gave the seniors affordable options.

According to Stacey Rusterholz, Campus Kitchen coordinator, the Nutrition Leader role was added to give these presentations. She also believes it is helpful to have someone who is knowledgeable about nutrition to serve as a resource for the rest of
the team.

“When we think about food access it is important to think about nutrition as well,” Rusterholtz said. “We want to ensure that we are providing nutritional information along with meals to the community. Nutrition education is essential to developing and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.”

For the presentations, Bacher will deliver the Campus Kitchen meals then give the seniors a handout with nutritional information while keeping it interactive by asking questions.

But some attendees are more engaged than others.

“At the John Kernodle senior center, they’re really into it and love hearing our presentations,” Bacher said. “At the [Graham Center] they’ll sometimes do a lot of side chatter and try to be quick. But, there’s a bunch of people who enjoy the presentations and even if they take away one thing, it’s useful.”

Bacher also tries to make the presentations seasonal. Recently, she did one on surviving the Valentine’s Day season and plans on teaching the seniors about the newly updated Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The seniors at these centers have a general idea of nutrition, but most of their education is outdated. Bacher said they are mostly focused on the trends shown in the media but won’t research these trends further.

For example, one of the seniors heard it was really good to eat oranges before bed for a better sleep. But that’s not a proven claim backed up with research, according
to Bacher.

“They won’t really verify what they hear,” she said. “I hope that that’s where we can come into play by providing evidence and academic background.”

The presentations are taught at senior centers because that’s where Campus Kitchen primarily delivers food. Bacher said this population is most at risk for being food insecure because they are at an age where they can’t really take care of themselves. Since it’s harder to get the information out to them, it makes them a good target population.

Bacher also believes it gives her the opportunity to go out and mend the gap between Elon students and the community.

“I’ve been out into the Burlington community just a couple of times, so I think it’s really important for us to cross that boundary,” Bacher said. “These centers are 10 minutes away, but it’s such an extreme difference between us and them.”

A growing role

Though the Nutrition Leader role has been active for less than a year, it already has seen potential to benefit Campus Kitchen in more ways other than the senior center presentations.

Currently, Bacher’s main role is education, but not necessarily bringing the nutrition information to the meals they deliver. But as the position grows, she hopes the role will apply more seasonality and health for a well-
balanced meal.

According to Rusterholz, the organization has started doing additional nutrition presentations for kids in collaboration with Healthy Alamance and the Alamance-Burlington School System. Bacher is beginning to help with them.

“We’re teaching kids at North Park about nutrition, we’re giving actual nutrition classes,” Bacher said. “Campus Kitchen has these outlines of classes, so we can look at these outlines and tweak them.”

Bacher plans on making these classes interactive as well by doing cooking demos to make nutrition fun.

Since she is a senior, Bacher will not be continuing the role next year. But she hopes the future Nutrition Leader will be impacted by the Burlington community the way she has by crossing boundaries that are only 10 minutes away while providing simple, but valuable information.

“I also really like interacting with a different age group,” Bacher said. “I always forget there are people not in their 20s, so it’s nice going into the community and having conversations with these people and bringing a smile to their face and food to their bellies.”

The applications will be open for Campus Kitchen at the end of the month.

Connecting with the garden

The food that goes into the meals Campus Kitchen primarily comes from Loy Farm, and the rest is supplemented with donations from Aramark.

This means that most of the food has to be seasonal — recently, it has been mostly green beans or salads. Pasta salads or pasta with meat sauce is then added to meals from the donations for a variety of choices.

“We try to keep it pretty well-rounded — we would never just have a plate of pasta or a salad because it’s hard to reach everyone,” Bacher said.

Bacher is also taking the “Garden Studio” class this year, so she spends her Tuesdays and Thursdays working at Loy Farm or the community garden from 5-6 p.m. as well as doing workdays Fridays from noon-3p.m. and Sundays 1-4 p.m.

Anyone can volunteer to come help during the workdays.

Campus Kitchen has two Garden Coordinators who are primarily in charge of the harvesting, but other members of the team also volunteer to help.

“It’s cool for me since I’m taking gardening, to see the plants and the water,” Bacher said. “It’s really gratifying to see stuff that you’ve literally planted with your own hands come together as a meal you can serve to so many people.”

Since the Loy Farm is not producing meat, all of the land is devoted to growing more vegetables. To produce the same amount of food while having and feeding animals, the farm would need more land.

This makes most of the meals that Campus Kitchen delivers plant-based.

“It’s gotten me way more involved with Loy and the community garden, and it’s so yummy and delicious and fresh and easy,” Bacher said.