Is There More to Food Than Meets the Tongue?

Silver Spring, Md.

The season of food-focused festivals is under way: turkey and stuffing, latkes and applesauce, mince pie, gingerbread, hoppin' john. Food connections are important for everyone -- but for some, they may be therapeutic.

Participants in a gardening and cooking program at Fox Chase Rehabilitation and Nursing Center have been showing signs of improved health, according to Kat Pearthree, Director of Social Work. And it's not just the food: it's the connections. "We started this gardening and cooking program in the early spring," Pearthree said. "And we are really starting to see clinical results."

While clinical results were not actually the point -- this was an attempt to go green with local food and a rain barrel -- Pearthree is not complaining. She observed that most people in the program have gained weight (considered a good thing in a nursing center). People with depression feel more alive. Residents diagnosed with "failure to thrive" are starting to thrive again.

"I am seeing results I don't get from any other kind of program," Pearthree explained. "There is a lot more to be learned about this."

The most significant results, she noted, involved memory. "Cooking seems to access a whole different part of people's memories than other activities do," she said, illustrating with an anecdote about a woman with severe short-term memory loss who saw the bread she had braided a couple hours before and asked Pearthree, "Is that the bread we made this morning?"

Pearthree said she was "totally floored" that the resident had remembered. "No matter what other projects I do, people with short-term memory loss simply don't remember them later," she explained. "There seems to be something special about the sensory stimulation of cooking your own food."

Perhaps, she speculates, it has to do with lifelong connections to food. "We have a lot of World War II veterans who participate in this program," she said. "Given the generation they are part of, you might be surprised by the number of men who love to cook." While peeling apples, veterans have reminisced at length about K.P. duty. A former physician with dementia recently made rosette rolls by tying surgical knots with the dough. And it's not just residents who are feeling the connections.

"When family members come in frazzled and tired, we let them go weed in the garden for a while," said Pearthree. "Caregiver stress goes down immediately." Staff members make unlikely connections over gardening plans. Special items from the Red Foxx Cafe -- the name residents have given the cooking program -- are conversation starters at lunch.

The program has also gone intergenerational, with University of Maryland graduate student Hillary Cohen now helping with the Red Foxx Cafe.

"Hillary and I talk a lot about how important it is for her generation to interact with this one," said Pearthree. "Her peers do not know a lot of World War II veterans, or Holocaust survivors, or Civil Rights marchers. While she did not originally plan to work with this population, she is thoroughly loving this chance to be a witness to the past."

The program has also received a company-wide award from Revera Health Systems, which includes 30 skilled care centers across the United States.

"This project is a perfect expression of the thoughtfulness and creativity of our staff members," said Cheri Kauset, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Revera Health Systems. "It is a labor of love that enriches lives, promotes healing and brings people together. It truly represents what Revera is all about."

Fox Chase, a member of Revera Health Systems, offers short-stay care and therapy after surgery or illness for adults of all ages, as well as long-term, respite and hospice care.