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Debrilla Ratchford said she’s trying to tip the mass consciousness, one bean sprout at a time.
“This is the hope of the planet right here,” she said, pinching an inchlong green sunflower sprout. “Can you imagine what our community would be like if just one person in each family would sprout something?”
Ratchford is one of about 20 vendors who sell everything from French bread to bushels of cherries at Albuquerque’s newest growers market, the Uptown Growers Market across from Presbyterian Hospital on Central Avenue.
Claire Dudley, governance manager at Presbyterian Health Care, said the hospital-sponsored growers market was the result of a community health survey Presbyterian conducted in 2011.
Hospital administrators held community health forums at all of Presbyterian’s locations and listened to people’s input. Dudley said the hospital then adopted three health goals: encouraging people in the community to be active, eat healthy foods and quit tobacco.
“When we looked at the ‘eat healthy’ goal, we looked at the availability of fresh, local produce and vegetables,” she said.
“What better way to increase accessibility to those foods than to start a growers market?”
Dudley said access to fresh food is important to physical health, and people should educate themselves on where their food comes from.
“It’s better for you in that most of it is organic, you know exactly who’s growing it and where they’re growing it,” she said.
“You can ask the growers how they grow the vegetables, and you get a firsthand experience of how your food is being produced, which is important.”
Ratchford grows all her sprouts — including alfalfa, clover, purple radish, onion, black lentil, chickpeas and mung beans — in her kitchen. She drinks a sprout smoothie for breakfast, eats a sprout salad at lunch and drinks sprout juice before bed.
She said she placed first in five events at the Albuquerque Senior Olympics, and she had trained for only 90 days.
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“What you eat affects your ability to do magical things,” Ratchford said. “When I came across the finish line for the 50-meter, I came in first overall, and they looked at me and were like ‘Wow, she’s not even in shape.’ It’s the sprouts. A year from now I’ll leave everyone in the dust, all because I’m willing to eat a handful of sprouts that are easier for my body to digest.”
Ratchford hopes the hospital will incorporate raw food into the hospital cafeteria, so immobile people can have access to fresh, living food. The hospital cafeteria makes food to order and also has a buffet. On the morning of July 18, the buffet’s bacon sat in a pool of grease, and soggy sausage patties were stacked on top of one another.
“That’s how this market is going to influence this hospital,” she said. “We get a lot of people, from surgery to Certified Nursing Assistants to administrative people, who come over and get a bag of sprouts and a spoon. That’s going to affect their consciousness.”
Justin Wagner, who was selling his family’s corn crop at the market, said he would support the hospital buying local food from the growers market to serve to patients.
Dudley said one of the challenges of using locally grown produce is that the hospital requires very large quantities of food, but she’s optimistic the hospital can find ways to work around this issue.
“We’re hopeful that we can work out an arrangement where we can have local food served in our hospitals,” she said. “We do need a large quantity, but there are a few vendors who would have enough.”
