When Santa Barbara-based nutritionist Christina Schmidt’s sister had a baby, she got phone calls night and day from the confused new mom looking for advice on feeding her baby. When Christina discovered that moms everywhere had the same questions, she developed the Baby Bistro Box and the Toddler Bistro Box to make it fun and easy for the rest of us to introduce our little ones to delicious and healthy gourmet meals.
As founder of Baby Bistro Brands, Christina is not only passionate about making it fun and easy for parents to create nutritious meals for their kids, she is also committed to giving back. Baby Bistro Brands believes that while global food aid is finite, local, sustainable farming can provide nutritious food for generations. Their goal is to grow one garden at a time, in any local or worldwide community seeking access to freshly grown produce. And they are doing just that. In the town of Opuwo, in the high desert of Namibia, is a crossroads and shelter for refugee children from nearby countries in Africa. Christina’s friend Kakarandua is working to build a community garden for the children there and her organization needs money to pipe in fresh water and to purchase tools to plow and seed their garden plot. Baby Bistro Brands donates 1% of retail sales to see this garden grow!
The Global Garden Project
We had the pleasure of learning about the inspiration that fuels Christina’s passion!
Generation Orange: What inspired you to donate 1% of your sales to the global garden project? What is the story behind this?
Christina Schmidt: Inspiration for donating 1% of sales for the global garden project. I want to see everyone have a fair chance to lead healthy lives, with adequate access to essential nutrients such as water, fruits and vegetables, protein foods and grains. While in first world countries we have excess food, and face an obesity epidemic because of convenience foods, giant sizes, and inactivity, in third world countries cultures do not even have access to clean water. Those cultures deserve to have a fair chance to live. Last year I traveled to Africa, specifically to Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. I had the goal in mind to visit some of the impoverished areas where peoples had been displaced by government regulations and wars. I saw shanty towns made of scraps, refugee camps, and much barren land without access to any water supply. I had brought with me cases of pencils from the states, because I had heard the poor children could not get them for school. I met a woman named Kakarandua living in Opuwo, Namibia. Opuwo was a crossroads of sorts for various tribal cultures who had migrated or been forced out of their homes due to war.She was affiliated with the Red Cross and introduced me to some of the children and families she tries to help. Many of the children were orphaned or members of very poor families. The children did not have the means to attend school, and begged for food or money from whomever passed through their town. Kakarandua expressed her dream to secure some land for a community garden center. The center would be a place where fresh produce would grow, children could meet and for sports, classes and activities, and women could learn how to create goods they could sell to people passing through the town. She said they had no water, and would need to dig a well and pipe water in to irrigate the land.
Generation Orange: How does building a global garden map back to your mission at Baby Bistro Brands?
Christina Schmidt: For me, helping them grow their garden served multiple purposes. It would provide fresh, healthy foods; teach the children how food grows, encourage them to eat fresh foods, and give them and their families (if they had parents and siblings) a sense of belonging, pride, and hope for their future. Many children assume they will die of AIDS before they mature past school age. The garden would also create a sustainable living. The people would work the garden, and be able to grow their own food instead of having to beg for morsels. My vision with Baby Bistro Brands is to provide families with access to the information and foods they need to build an optimal nutritional foundation for future generations. This goal coincides with supporting sustainable, local, organic farming that supports the environment and provides nutrient dense foods. We need to teach people how to help themselves, or at least be able to make educated decisions.
Generation Orange: And one more question…What makes you Orange?
Christina Schmidt: What makes me Orange? I want to raise awareness and put people back in control of their bodies. The obesity epidemic is a sign we have become too passive in how we nourish our bodies. We have moved so far away from our ancestral ways of hunting and gathering that many children think chicken literally comes in plastic wrapped Styrofoam containers at the grocery store. They have no idea that fruits and vegetables come from seeds grown in the earth. While obesity is one form of malnourishment, we cannot ignore the other, which is starvation. Death from lack of food and essential nutrients is incredibly common throughout the third worlds of Asia and Africa. Infant and maternal mortality is rampant. Surprisingly, and perhaps a future omen, if there was no other food in an African shanty town or camp, there was a place people could buy Coca Cola. We need to reconnect with our food chain, and remember our place in the circle of life.
Jan 02nd by Generation Orange