Wrapping Up

I spent the next couple of days finishing up work on the nutrition project. Of the 200 printed surveys, roughly 160 were completed, and I had time to type up the data on half of them. The four communities analyzed were Ojo de Agua, Corral de Piedras (Los Reyes), Jamaica and San Isidro de la Estacada. I coded for age; literacy level; access to a scale; most frequent consumption of which protein, carbohydrate, fruit, or vegetable; use of which type of cooking fat; favorite food; soda as a favorite drink; frequency of lack of money to buy food; and commonness of disorders or diseases such as diabetes, malnutrition, obesity, heart burn and high blood pressure.

My findings were pretty intuitive, and consistent with other nutrition studies, according to Mary Murrell. Soda was a favorite for many of the families, no one ate fish or seafood, even chicken consumption was infrequent due to lack of money, and communities with lesser protein consumption also tended to use lard in place of vegetable oil. Almost everyone lacked money to buy food “at times”, and not uncommon was a family with an overweight parent and malnutritioned children.

I presented these findings to ECOSS, the group who administered most of the questionnaires. Most interesting, to them, was the “What would you like to learn about nutrition” portion of the questionnaire. Women wanted to learn new cooking techniques, to know how to feed their kids well and economically, and to know what kind of food products contained protein and vitamins. I really believe this information can be very useful to the workshops ECOSS presents. It can also help TEATRO. I sat down with Conchita, the TEATRO coordinator, to advise her on the new nutrition-themed play the group was working on.

In addition to presenting ECOSS with the findings, I bought them cake. Praise the Lord, I ran into Jose, Ana Pena’s husband, on the way to the pasteleria, and he gave me a lift back to CASA. Mexican cakes are huge and heavy. Just as I was cutting up the cake, Tim and Mallory walked in with a big cake – and a pineapple – for me! Lourdes joined us also, and the chicos de TEATRO came in, too. It was a bittersweet end, as we all exchanged email addresses and agreed to meet up in the evening for dinner.