Training-Field Study: Greens Powder – the Next Cure to World Hunger?
Our May Field Study is currently being held on SIFAT’s campus May 12-25. Sarah Murphree, SIFAT co-founder Sarah Corson’s great-niece, is a participant this year. She will be blogging about her experience and giving readers a glimpse of what types of appropriate technologies and community development topics are being presented, as well as a look into who some of the participants are. A 2012 graduate of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Sarah recently directed and produced two short films, one taking first place in the 2013 Nashville Film Festival. She is currently working on her third film, a documentary about Camp Koinonia.
It’s simply amazing what greens can do for you. As a child, I was constantly told to eat my greens. This typically included broccoli, peas and turnips. It just so happened I fell into the one percentile range of children who actually enjoy vegetables. My brother, on the other hand, was a different story. My mother was constantly trying new methods to get him to eat his greens. Unfortunately, many of her tricks never worked. This was probably because she never tried new methods in how she served vegetables, just new incentives. Now if my mother had known anything about green powder, I can assure you my brother would have eaten his greens.
Classes on Wednesday focused on agriculture and nutrition. They were taught by Dave and Therese Kennedy of Leaf for Life and Martin Price of ECHO.
This week at SIFAT, we had the pleasure to spend a few days with Dave Kennedy and his wife Therese, founders of the organization
Leaf for Life. Dave and Therese work hard to educate children, families and those in developing countries on the benefits of incorporating greens in your diet.
Most people don’t know how beneficial greens can be for you. People associate greens with a poor man’s food; it is below the wealthy and not good enough for the poor. However, greens could be the next cure to end world hunger. In developing countries, almost 80 percent of malnourished children suffer from diseases that are easily curable with the right nutrients and vitamins. Many children suffer from lack of Vitamin A and Iron, which lead to poor eyesight, blindness, underdevelopment and growth in the human body. These struggles could easily be eliminated with a power food such as greens.
Leaves of green plants can be dried in a solar dryer. Dave (right) taught everyone how to make our own solar dryers, so that we could implement this technology ourselves.
Dave and Therese are full advocates of green powder. Green powder is as simple as it sounds. It is a powder extracted from a variety of green, leafy plants. Leafy plants are packed with vitamin A, iron folate, calcium and magnesium – all necessary for human growth and development. Greens don’t just include lettuce and cabbage (the two most popular leaf plants). They also include wolfberry, toona, parsley, moringa, chaya, grape leaves and kale. The problem is people don’t know about them.
To make green powder, the dried leaves are ground in a mortar and pestle, or even a coffee grinder. Then, they are ground into a powder that can be added to flour when baking, used as a topping and mixed in other recipes. The green powder if full of vitamins and nutrients!
Dave and Therese educated us on the nutritious value of a variety of leaf plants. We planted our own green plants, dehydrated, chopped and ground them up until we had our own green powder. Green powder can be used from everything from toppings, to baking and mixing it in with other recipes. Dave and Therese showed us how to make their favorite recipes with green powder and, boy, were they green!
Green powder can be used in soups, pastas, breads and even cookies!
Next, we got to try our hand at making pasta! I’ll share our adventure in the kitchen in my next post.
