Yes! Magazine: Service Member Tasia Yamamura on Wai?anae Youth Garden & Her Love of Breadfruit

By Tasia Yamamura

I have a love affair with ?ulu, also known as breadfruit. ?Ulu is a round, football-sized fruit with a bumpy, green exterior and nutritious, starchy interior. When I applied to be a FoodCorps service member, one of the questions on the application was “If you were a vegetable, what would you be and why?” I answered, “While it is somewhere between a fruit and a vegetable, I identify with the humble, local fruit ?ulu because one tree has the capacity to feed and sustain many people and I aspire to serve my community in a similar way.”

I chose to join FoodCorps and teach kids about nutritious food  because I’ve seen firsthand how food can transform your body and your life. Growing up in a household with more traditionally Japanese foods, I didn’t eat a lot of dairy or wheat. So when I went to college and began to diversify my diet (you remember what you ate in college?!), I couldn’tunderstand why I had perpetual stomachaches that never seemed to go away. It took six years until it finally clicked that my dairy and gluten consumption was the culprit. I began to incorporate more whole foods into my diet and the difference was astounding. My stomachaches disappeared, and I felt renewed and whole again. Now I am a firm believer in the healing power of food. This experience motivates me to share this knowledge with others who suffer from diet-related health problems, starting with the littlest ones in our community.

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