Only 4% of kids eat the daily amount of recommended fruits and vegetables.
The result? Our kids are sick. Sacramento has a 40% childhood obesity rate. Kids now suffer from adult diseases like hypertension and diabetes.

These are all preventable–if we eat our veggies.

You have been a loyal donor, helping our students learn to eat their veggies since 2012.

Please help us fund a student or a school today.
• It costs $16,000 to fund a new school.
• That’s $160 per student.

This matters. This year alone, we reunited with former students, now adults, who have
continued to eat their veggies.

Pear (her real name!) was one of our first students in 2012. Today, she is a high
school senior. She continues to eat her veggies and wants to be an advocate for
others’ health. She has been accepted into seven nursing schools so far! She will
attend next fall.

“Pear and I made a watermelon cucumber salad at a festival. Before going on
stage, Pear confessed that she doesn’t like watermelon. I asked if she would still
help me make the recipe, and she agreed. Not long after we finished, as the
smell of fresh watermelon filled our noses, Pear asked if she could eat some of
the leftovers. On that day, she learned to love watermelon!”
— memory from our founder, 2015.

Our program is designed using behavior change science. Our goal is to help students develop healthy habits that will stick with them for life. 93 percent of our students fearlessly taste a new fruit or vegetable. Then, we repeat this behavior week after week. We can see from our former students that these habits last!

Our students learn to love new foods, and also about how food works in their bodies. Some of the nutrition facts they learn include…

• what types of sugar make them crash and what kinds of carbohydrates give them
• energy for school.
• that our brains need fat, and how to tell the difference between plant fats like olive oil and avocado and animal fats like butter and cheese.
• about the importance of fiber, and that it sweeps us out like a broom.

Aidan started attending our programs in elementary school in 2013. Today,
he’s a chef himself! This year he was on the team that won our Veggie of the
Year competition. “What a great full circle moment!” said Chef Aidan upon winning Veggie of the Year. 2024.

82 percent of our kids know to eat a fruit or vegetable with every snack and meal.
Leia was in elementary school 10 years ago. Today, she’s part of a high school gardening program. She continues to love eating healthy and cooking with her family a decade after participating in her first food literacy class! “It’s awesome to see my former students growing up and still making healthy choices,” beams our longtime instructor, Daikon Dave. Your donation makes these life-changing habits possible!

Our program is popular with students, principals, and parents. It’s so popular, in fact, that we’re the most-requested after school program in two school districts. This year, we plan to teach our hands-on cooking and nutrition program in 21 schools. That’s only half of the low-income Title-1 elementary schools that need us in Sacramento.

Please donate today. It costs $16,000 to fund a school. That’s just $160 per student.