Antonia Demas, Ph.D.

Being ahead of her time is probably in her genes.

by Pamela Gerry

 

Can a vegan diet boost a student’s grades and energy?

 

Can a group of teens be taught to live without junk food and eat fruits and veggies for a month?

 

Pamela Gerry interviews Dr. Antonia Demas, a researcher who specializes in food education as a means of improving students’ school performance, self-image, and leadership skills.  She has implemented a program of placing plant-based food into the curriculum of schools, making it hands on, sensory based, and most of all fun.

 

Dr. Antonia’s food memories date back to when she was 5 years old, visiting her Italian grandparents in Brooklyn and enjoying fresh organic produce from their backyard garden.  “They were growing organically way back then, even the unusual greens we see today,” Even today, when Antonia smells roses, fresh figs and herbs, she sees herself back in that beloved kitchen. “Smell is the sense most associated with memory, and pleasant food smells are a powerful way to re-member the past,” says Demas, who teaches children to appreciate nutritious foods through their sensory properties.

 

By the time she was 14 years old, Antonia made the decision to become a vegetarian.  It was Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington, DC, in the 1960's, and this idea was not popular at all.   Thinking seriously about what she was doing whenever she put food into her mouth, Antonia trained herself to disdain the taste of meat, because she couldn't stand all the ramifications involved with the act of eating animals.

 

She really had no support for her stance, and although her mom didn't buck it, she simply told her to prepare her own food.  Since she had to take responsibility for feeding herself, she began to read about vegetarian issues.  She already had an  “importance of food” attitude from her grandmother, so studying where food comes from was a natural next step for her.   Learning about food production, especially feedlot horrors, validated her sensitivities about being a vegetarian.

 

Antonia married and by the time her own children were in school, she had received her Bachelors Degree from Goddard College in Vermont. To be near her children, Antonia always volunteered in the school system, to help in any way she could, and, of course, she was always Homeroom

Mother.  At seasonal holidays, she never brought in cupcakes, etc.; she opted instead to do  “hands-on” activities like carving pumpkins, or baking apples for Halloween.  She would teach, for example, about the history of rutabaga and turnips, which were carved for Halloween before pumpkins were known in Europe, and explain the cultural traditions of the holidays, and bring geography and tradition into the study, too.  She offered to develop food themes around various academic subjects. For example, if the class was studying oceanography, Antonia would bring in plants from the ocean, and cook with them. Teachers were delighted with her curricular units.  She was also paying attention to the school lunch program, and was determined to improve it through classroom education.  Today both of her children are vegans, and they thank their mom for their fortunate and healthy beginning.

 

Dr. Demas taught  “Vegetarian International Cuisine” classes to the community for 11 years at Cornell University; she completed both her Masters and Ph.D. degrees there.

 

During the time that Antonia was volunteering in the Trumansburg school system, where her children were students, the U.S. government issued new rules governing the nation's school lunch program.  (The first time in fifty years!)  Dietary fat calories must be reduced to 30% of total calories.  In response to officials asking, ”How do we get students to eat healthy foods?”  Dr. Demas offered her program that taught kids about new foods, helped them prepare the foods, and then got them to eat them!  The USDA's idea for complying with this mandate was to offer low fat hot dogs, or to wash the fat off of hamburgers after frying them!!  Antonia says that for her program, the timing was fortuitous. 

 

Dr. Demas was invited to Washington to testify about her “Trumansburg Study,” as it was to become known.  This project naturally had evolved during her 18-year volunteer association in that school system.  Trumansburg school officials agreed to help her do research, and Antonia corralled 35 volunteers — parents, college students and grandparents, to help collate data.  She would introduce new foods (16 over time), in unit studies, once every two weeks in grades K-4 in half of the school population, which served as the intervention group.  The other half served as the control.  The kids kept journals to record what they learned.  Indigenous music, a person from the culture studied, and artifacts were introduced in class, along with the food.  The children received training in cooking techniques, and loved the actual cooking part.  Ingredients were plant-based, and featured commodity foods.  Fat content was the big issue, and all of the recipes that were used contained 1-6% fat.

 

In the cafeteria, foods were weighed by volunteers before and after the students ate.  Students who were involved with the classroom intervention, ate up to 20 times more than the kids who had not had the opportunity to cook with and learn about these new foods.  In addition, families of involved students changed their eating habits when the kids brought home the recipes to repeat the fun they'd had in school.

 

Dr. Demas' work has received 3 USDA awards:

 

In addition, her work received the Society of Nutrition Education’s National Award for Excellence in Nutrition Education.

 

Dr. Demas' work has been duplicated in over 60 schools, in 12 states since Trumansburg.  Some schools even have organic gardens which serve as outdoor food labs.  In New York City, students have painted food-based murals in the cafeteria.  This curriculum has been approved for use in California schools by the Department of Education.  Wouldn't this be a great program for your community?  The Food is Elementary workbook and video are available from The Food Studies Institute, a non-profit corporation that Antonia set up to help in the area of financial funding, one of her major challenges throughout all these years.

 

Antonia recently completed a project in Miami, Florida, with students from the Bay Point School, a school for teen males who have been sent there by the courts.  These students were part of a Culinary Arts program that she developed with the staff.  She first taught the cooks about food and nutrition, then they taught the culinary students.  Antonia took students on a variety of field trips to places like an organic garden, fruit and spice park, and health food store.  Interest from staff and students was great, so the program expanded to include a pilot study whereby the students prepared their own plant-based foods for a month.  Miami Children’s Hospital donated blood tests before and after intervention to determine if the health of the students improved.  In addition, behavioral and academic data was recorded.  By all accounts, the students benefited greatly on this diet.  Dr. Demas is now writing up the results of the pilot, putting together a design for a national study with this population that will expand to include three schools and a larger sample size, and an accomplished team of researchers.  This study could have major national implications if it can be clearly demonstrated that diet can dramatically improve the health and behavior of troubled youth.  If you would like more information, please contact the Food Studies Institute located in Trumansburg, New York.

  

©Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved. Health Science is the publication of the National Health Association. This article reprinted from the Fall 2001 issue.