The Healthy Carolina Farmers Market now offers a tour for the USC community to help them shop for fresh, healthy, locally grown produce and sustainable products at the weekly event on Greene Street.
The tour of the Market, which is held each Tuesday from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., is led by registered dietitian and nutritionist and Nutrition Outreach Coordinator for Healthy Carolina, Melissa Reid. Reid normally works with Healthy Carolina by teaching cooking classes and doing farmers market tabling events and other types of outreach for the initiative dedicated to a healthy campus environment. The idea for the tour came from a number of students coming up to the Healthy Carolina table and asking questions about the Farmers Market.
“A lot of students don’t really know how to approach the vendors and what questions to ask, and so we’re just here to try to make it as easy as possible for the students to purchase the fresh produce and answer any of their questions from a registered dietitian’s standpoint," Reid said.
She described the tours as a chance to educate students about the products as well as encourage them to purchase them and put them to use in healthy recipes.
The tour this Tuesday started at 11:30 a.m., two hours after the Market opened, and lasted about 15 minutes. Students do not need to sign up for the tour beforehand. Typically, the tour will walk to each of the vendors where Reid will highlight interesting facts about each of them. For example, they talk about how the grits normally are put through the mill the day before the Farmers Market, which makes these grits almost as fresh as you can get.
They discuss not only nutrition information for products, but also the importance of when certain produce is in season. This makes the produce cheaper as well as fresher and a better buy overall for students.
"As long as the students are interested and we get a good feedback from it we definitely plan on continuing them,” Reid said on future plans for more farmers market tours.