Who Said You Shouldn’t Play With Food?
The Success of FoodPlay
Today’s Dietitian
By Kate Jackson
Vol. 7, No. 2, p. 34

Combine juggling, magic, puppets, and a playful cast of characters and you’ve got an award-winning project that teaches children that healthy food can be fun.

“Barbara, I loved when you juggled the apples and I will give up sugar eating and soda drinking because I saw your show.”
— Unusual fan mail for an unusual RD

If you could play, have fun, and make others laugh, all the while doing an important job that draws upon your dietetics skills and training, you would, wouldn’t you? Can’t be done, you say? Just ask Barbara Storper, MS, RD. She’s been doing this award-winning work for years, and more than 3 million children got healthier as a result.

It’s hard to imagine a less conventional career path than the one paved by this most whimsical of dietitians. Storper has inspired many a dietitian and teacher to follow their hearts and passions in whatever unusual directions they may lead. Proving that you can have fun doing what you love and yet be serious and highly successful at the same time, Storper has rolled the power of the entrepreneurial spirit, impact of the arts, and love of children into FoodPlay Productions, a Massachusetts-based multimedia company that presents touring theater shows and keynotes across the country.

An Emmy Award-winning theatrical road show at the heart of that enterprise, FoodPlay is Storper’s brainchild, truly a labor of love that’s blossomed over two decades into something of a phenomenon. There are countless efforts to combat the obesity epidemic that’s destroying the health of the nation’s children, but none is as lively and child-friendly as this spectacle that brings magic, juggling, music, puppets, and a playful cast of characters into schools across the country. But it’s more than entertainment. Woven into the theatrical spectacle are serious lessons that inform young people about healthful eating and encourage and inspire them to adopt nutritious diets and active lifestyles. Wrapped in humor are lessons on topics such as reading food labels, cutting down on sugar and fat, the food pyramid, and the importance of 5 A Day. It’s caught the attention of the media and has been covered by the leading television networks and cable stations, radio, newspapers, and journals. The Journal of the American Dietetic Association, for example, gave FoodPlay a rave review, noting that “its major impact is one of motivation and empowerment.”

Two years after beginning FoodPlay, Storper launched The Juggling Nutrition Magician Show and created the character of Tobe Fit, the Juggling Nutrition Magician, to show impressionable preschoolers that it can be fun to eat well and stay fit. In 1995, she developed another show, This Is Your Life!, tailored to the needs and tastes of adolescents, which shares the goals of FoodPlay and extends them for an older middle and high school audience to address issues such as body image, eating disorders, self-esteem, and tobacco-free living.

FoodPlay’s science-based programs, which have been sponsored by the USDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the state departments of education and public health across the country, teach kids to evaluate and reject negative media messages about food, such as those contained in junk food commercials. FoodPlay also teaches kids to make intelligent choices that promote both their own health and the health of the planet. The messages delivered during the theatrical event are reinforced through the use of follow-up resource kits that contain materials for students, parents, teachers, food-service professionals, and school health staff that can be integrated into the curriculum to keep the messages alive throughout the year.

The FoodPlay brand also extends to a series of award-winning videos Storper has created: Kid’s Kitchen for those in fourth grade and younger, Janey Junkfood’s Fresh Adventure for children in kindergarten through sixth grade, and This Is Your Life! for students in fifth to 12th grades. And now Storper—who’s not only a dietitian but also a journalist, performer, consultant, and popular speaker—is turning her attention to writing a series of children’s books, one called Janey Junkfood’s Fresh Adventure, based on characters in FoodPlay. In this series, her character Tobe Fit is a food detective and coach who will help kids make good choices. A tool kit will accompany each book to provide hands-on activities that help children incorporate healthy eating activities.

How did Storper start this journey down what is surely one of the more unusual and less-traveled career paths? While one might expect so buoyant an enterprise to have its seeds in a blissful theatrical encounter, FoodPlay did not emerge from an uplifting experience, but rather from tragedy. Her mission was born, Storper relates, from the painful experience of watching her mother battle cancer, which impressed upon her the critical need for children to develop healthy habits right from the start. It was given shape in 1982, when she was working at the New York City Bureau of Education after getting her master’s degree in nutrition from Columbia University Teachers College. She was asked to give a lecture on nutrition to an inner-city school in Brooklyn. Some years earlier, when she was studying journalism at the University of Michigan, Storper realized that she’d always had an inner desire to be a clown. She learned to juggle, went to mime school, took puppet workshops, and studied storytelling. When the invitation came to lecture in Brooklyn, the idea took flight.

Storper remembered being uninspired by her early lessons in nutrition. “The four food groups didn’t mean anything to me and I never really understood it.” She was certain that kids would appreciate it more if it were presented in a different way. “I just loved the idea of making food really look fun and, being very visual, I was drawn to the power of theater.” She was also intrigued by the techniques pop culture food icons used to advertise and promote junk foods and thought she might use the same techniques to deliver a more useful and positive message.

With her boyfriend, whom she taught to juggle, Storper created FoodPlay in three weeks. Rather than deliver a standard lecture, she combined the love of theater with her newly acquired performance skills and delivered her message in a playful new way—through a live theater presentation. The New York City Board of Education was thrilled, she says, adding, “They couldn’t believe that 400 kids could sit mesmerized by learning nutrition.” The board then funded them to tour the city, bringing FoodPlay to the New York schools.

The show went by the wayside, though, when Storper got a job as a journalist and media spokesperson for the Massachusetts Nutrition Resource Center in Boston. She was able to put her professions—journalism and dietetics—together and wrote weekly nutrition articles and worked with the press, but she sorely missed the live theater with children.

She requested a day off each week to perform the show, and, because her partner remained in New York, she performed alone, calling herself a juggling nutrition magician. Again, her production became popular, so she kept curtailing her day job—going down to three days, then to two days, and finally, after nine years, leaving altogether to go on with the show full time. She took on another partner, started doing the show on a daily basis, and began creating the follow-up materials—activity guides and reproducible handouts, for example—that she now provides with each performance.

In 1992, she received a grant to work on a television special and once again had to leave performing behind. She delegated that work to professional performers and began training actors and jugglers to do the shows. Today, FoodPlay Productions has four different troupes—two performers to each troupe—that tour the country, mostly in the Northeast, but also in one- to eight-week tours nationwide.

Although Storper no longer performs, she offers keynote conference presentations for dietitians, foodservice directors, and health educators to show them “how to turn kids on to healthy habits using creativity.” In this way, she’s able to perform for adults, demonstrating in a hands-on way how they can excite kids to improve their habits. “I bring along my props and puppets, my storytelling, my songs, and my videos to get our profession and other educators excited about putting some joy back into their lives.”

To that end, Storper has created a daylong experience called FoodPlayshop—like a workshop, but a playshop—where she works with educators to develop creative ways to work with kids about nutrition. Dietitians, she says, have reacted positively. “They really want to spread their wings and become more creative in their pursuits. What I try to do is tell them that they don’t have to be magicians to teach nutrition, but they should incorporate what it is they love to do. For example, a foodservice director might like to sew, so she could sew fun vegetable hats for all the cafeteria workers to wear. Others might like to sing, so they could help kids create rap songs and sing with them. An artist can help kids make murals and paint the lunch room. Whatever it is, put your passion in your work. Whatever it is that gets you going you can put into your nutrition education profession and make it fun.”

But it’s not all fun and games for Storper. She’s contributed to a range of scholarly and professional journals; held consultancies with prestigious educational and nonprofit organizations and government agencies; and given keynote conference presentations to dozens of leading dietetics and education conferences. In addition, Storper directs interns in their community rotations for the American Dietetic Association (ADA) Dietetic Internship Program. She’s been an advocate for media responsibility as well, lobbying the Federal Trade Commission and the FDA to eliminate misleading advertising that negatively influences children. And through entrepreneurship seminars, she encourages other dietitians to discover their creativity and use their passions as a foundation for successful businesses.

For her innovative approach to nutrition education, the much-lauded Storper not only snagged an Emmy for a special television presentation of FoodPlay, but was also honored by the ADA at its most recent Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo, given its award for “Outstanding Nutrition Entrepreneur in the Country” in recognition of her “creativity, leadership, and entrepreneurial spirit impacting the nutrition and health of the nation’s youth,” and has been honored by the Society for Nutrition Education three times.

The highly rated FoodPlay programs, which satisfy state and federal guidelines for comprehensive health education, have been demonstrated to be highly effective. Validated evaluations have indicated significant improvement in nutrition and exercise habits. Following attendance at these events, students report that they indulge in fewer bad habits and have adopted more good ones. They note, for example, that they drink less soda, eat fewer sweets and fatty foods, consume more fruits and vegetables, read food labels, eat breakfast more often, eat a more balanced diet, and exercise regularly.

Storper’s FoodPlay Productions live touring theater shows are presented at schools, special events, and conferences. The various productions have been sponsored by state departments of education and public health across the country, as well as by the USDA, CDC, TEAM nutrition, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, and a host of other organizations. To reach a wider audience, Storper is seeking corporate sponsorship to help bring FoodPlay to schools in need in underserved communities.

One of the prices of Storper’s success is that she is too busy to do what she loves most. She toured with FoodPlay for more than a decade, and now, as founder and director of FoodPlay Productions, manages the productions and develops its products. “I don’t get to be with the kids that much. A few weeks ago I went to see some of the shows and got to do some workshops, and it was fantastic. I really miss that and I’m going to try to go back to that because my love really is working directly with the kids to help them see through the messages they’re getting and make better choices—and doing it in a fun way.”

For more information, visit www.foodplay.com.

— Kate Jackson is a staff writer for Today’s Dietitian.

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