- Authored by Karen Ramirez, Senior at Jefferson High School, Member of RootDown LA for 2.5 months In my training so far with Root Down LA it has been a great experience just to be able to be around my friends to learn about healthy food. I have been exposed to valuable information I wasn’t familiar with. Back when, if Katy told me to try a fresh tomato by itself I would be like yuck! However, now I could eat it and I know what to expect. So far I know that I want to help my community to eat healthier because I see the problem in our society and it is because there are not so many whole foods available.
We as teenagers find it easier to go to the store and buy a bag of hot Cheetos, but what is not shown in reality is how much we affect our organisms with this food. What make’s it worse our adults as role model let it happen. Can it be that we are not well informed? Or that our society has become that lazy? No we cannot drain our health away. It is said that our generation is not expected to live long because of how we manage our food eating system...
However, I am one of those persons willing to learn from teachers such as Megan, Roxana and Katy about how to eat healthier. I am also willing to teach others. It make’s me proud to be part of something so wonderful like Root Down LA because I am putting my little pieces of grain to improve the eating system.
Until today I am still surprise that there are still people in this world that care about me and I feel that this is what really should matter in our community. Being able to participate in events where we could show up with fresh fruits and vegetables to feed people who work so hard everyday should be the least we could do. I personally like being part of Root Down LA and making healthy food tasting events for them is the best, especially when we introduce other people to healthy foods they have not tried. At first they are like, “Ew, what is this? “I am not eating that” and that ‘s when we really start pushing, “Oh just try it!” One minute later I see them coming back for more. It’s not that they don’t like it, it’s that they are afraid to try something healthy because they think it must taste terrible. They automatically think “Oh it’s healthy it must be nasty.” But no if we simply try it, who knows maybe we can end up liking it. And that is were we as a community should try to help out – to get people to try and like new healthy foods - and that is what I am trying to do.
