Hampshire County
Community Story Archive
Sharing Stories, Creating Change
JULES
Jules came to Umass Amherst as a freshman during the start of the pandemic to study Nursing. As she’s gone through her 4 years of nursing education she’s experienced different communities and observed the need for nutrition education, food access for all and to treat food as medicine. During her senior year before graduating in May 2024 she served as an intern with Healthy Hampshire’s Produce Prescription Program through the Hilltown Health Center. This experience and her education have allowed her to connect her personal and professional interests in health and nutrition to identifying community needs and how to enact solutions. She’s passionate about getting to know food, cooking, and the joy and connection it holds.
"Food is everything. Food is life-giving, and it's vital for our physical bodies. But food means so much more than just the calories that we take in. Food is rooted in our culture and our religion and our families. Food is comfort and how we were raised. Food can be self-expression. Food can be art."
Check out some interview excerpts below:
"I think vegetables are the most incredible food that we have. I think that they’re, in a short way, a simple answer to a lot of complicated problems. Culturally we’ve become so afraid of vegetables. Vegetables are incredible… I think we need to see more vegetables, hold more vegetables, and learn to cook and eat them and that will help us become a healthier society."
"Something I'd like to share with you is eradicating food fear [which is] something I feel very passionate about. A lot of the times when I talk to people about food and cooking a barrier is fear. They don't know how to buy it. They don't know where to buy it. What do you do with a rutabaga? I don't want to mess it up. I don't want to cook something I'm not going to like…all these what-ifs and unknowns. My advice is just to try it. Buy a rutabaga, cook a rutabaga the wrong way, it doesn't matter, because you're going to learn something through the process."
"I think that the greatest challenge for me, throughout the pandemic was the lack of human connection. And from the challenge of not having human connection, I realize how fascinating and incredible and important people are, and how important it is to take care of friends and family and spend time with them. Never take a hug for granted and just soak everyone up, and enjoy being around other people because we missed out on that. We missed out on quite a bit of that."