How to serve healthier foods for less money while recording life stories

April 14, 5:49 PMSacramento Nutrition ExaminerAnne Hart

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As I made the rounds of senior centers to look at what they're serving for lunch, I never saw anyone present any juicing feasts. Instead, I noticed white bread as in the whiter the bread the sooner you're dead, cold cuts, mashed potatoes heavily laden with transfats in margarine or saturated fats with butter, fatty meat, overcooked green beans, carrots, limp lasagna stuffed with translucent zuchinni, tired spinach, or faded broccoli and covered in a thick, overly salted tomato sauce with the taste of its tin-can home.

Sure, the centers can't afford to serve more nutritious food. But why is what's on the plate so heavily salted? instead, plan hobby clubs where members may plant fresh herbs in earthenware crocks or in the back yard of senior centers and apartment complexes.

At one assisted living center for low-income seniors, I bought a lunch as a guest for $10 which consisted of lasagne pasta so undercooked it could not be chewed and a few florets of overcooked, oily cauliflower. The tomato sauce, again came from a can and added another thousand milligrams or more of salt to the stuffing inside.

Are you trying to preserve foods a few days longer? Salt is put into bread and some soups to preserve the food a few days longer. But fresh dill tastes better.

People were eating the inside stuffing and leaving the pasta. How about serving a vegetable plate or brown rice and beans? Or a can of no-salt-added Pacific salmon packed in water on a bed of spinach? The cost would have been less than cooking the lasagne. Will somebody serve warm whole grain buckwheat in a thin pastry fillo?

You can serve better foods for less money in senior centers and assisted living complexes simply by growing vegetables in the back yard in a small space or in planters. It's a gardening hobby the seniors could work on while the vegetables and fruits grown can be used to make more nutritious food.

Look at the food served today to seniors. it's similar to what is served to prisoners--white bread baloney sandwiches, salty, overcooked vegetables, iceberg lettuce salads with almost no nutrition, processed cheese, mashed potatoes full of transfats with little fiber, and virtually no whole oat groats or brown rice.

Some of these places for the "active retired" charge nearly $4,000 a month for three hots and a cot. The issue is not the size of the apartment or condo. It's the food served in the dining halls or at senior centers where people congregate for a $2 or $3 lunch. There's also a few hours of club meetings or afternoon classes and dances.

How about bringing a weekly or monthly farmer's market of fruit and produce there? Add a weekly world music free performance by various students or volunteer musicians. Offer a vegetable and fruit juicing feast. Serve whole grains with chopped parsley as a salad...barley, oats, wheat, rice....Anybody hear of a salad of tabbouli (whole grains tossed with chopped parsley and mint) or mashed garbanzos with sesame seed sauce and lemon served in a senior center lunch?

Two or three dollars can buy plenty of home-grown vegetables, especially the green, leafy vegetables and tomatoes. Beans have enough fiber to control blood sugars better than white bread and cold cuts. Need to do some fund-raising for better foods? Consider recording highlights of peoples' life stories on DVDs or CDs or making time capsules. Throw a celebration of plant life luncheon.

Dessert usually is sugar-whacked jello or greasy pudding or soup with enough salt the body needs for a year. It's not the cost of the food because edible plants and beans can be grown in the back yard in tiny spaces. Beans are full of fiber and cheap, but they are not served unless drenched in salt and sugary barbecue sauce instead of simmered with turmeric and curry powder with onions for flavor instead of salt processed in the factories with aluminum. See, the problem is not the cost, it's not knowing what foods are really healthy for most people over age 70.

Why are caffeinated and sugary drinks served instead of water flavored with lemon, lime, or herbal teas and decaffeinated green tea? It's the heavy salt and hidden transfats, margarine, artificial sweeteners, or syrups and the TV dinner-type ambiance of the cheap two dollar meals that makes me wonder....Why is there so much salt dumped in the food that masks natural flavors?

Do you think the older people can't taste it because of what the years has done to taste buds? The same goes for the assisted living senior centers. Are there any macrobiotic cooks working the lunch crowd at at the various senior centers, assisted living lunchrooms, and ethnic or church-related groups?

One solution to this problem is to combine life story telling, recording, or writing with a nutritious lunch where the seniors can have the choice to salt or sweeten their own food if they want it rather than have it salted or sweetened for them. People on special diets have to brown bag it. But why not combine a lunch with a life story recording and also record what food is served?

Every senior citizen's life deserves a multimedia recording and transcription in a time capsule for future generations. Here's what Sacramento seniors are doing about it....from life writing courses at senior centers, public libraries, or the Renaissance Society and other places for lifelong learning...to writing and recording life stories for the great grand children.

It would be great to read about the many opportunities and classes where senior citizens learn about how to write or video record their life story highlights. Let them make history as they talk about what food they ate.

Library conference rooms, classes in lifelong learning such as the Renaissance society, and other groups give could give courses or hold more lunch bunch groups along with recording or writing life stories. This also works at the senior centers. How about bringing more seniors to college campuses and bringing graduate students to senior centers for an exchange of issues and talk on nutrition combined with life story writing or recording and for entertainment, once in a while, a classical or world music concert at noon, not after sundown brought to the local center near a bus line.

Instead of frozen burgers with cheese processed like salt, with aluminum, how about serving a dish of whole oat groats with sunflower seeds and vegetables next to a plate of lentils or high-fiber beans and juicy collards or kale? Or brown rice and shredded raw beets? Or vegetables easy to chew, but still nutritious and not overcooked in water with the vitamins lying in the water and not in the vegetables?

Senior citizens in multimedia are increasing, where senior citizens make time capsules, write genograms (family medical histories for the progeny), and enjoy lunch. After lunch they can video record life stories and even put them up on uTube or Google Video. When you record a life story, include what the person or family ate.

Post on Google, Internet Archive, uTube and other similar sites life stories and old fashioned cooking bees. Encourage other seniors working with intergenerational projects to record, write or broadcast skits, life stories, monologues, essays, and record their turning points or significant events and life story highlights.

Then transcribe the recordings to text and put them in a time capsule on a DVD. Present the food habits and life story highlights of relatives and friends (for future generations) with a time capsule or genogram (family medical history of past generations). It's a celebration of life.