Knowing it's important to eat healthy is easy, but having the tools to do it is a bit more difficult. That's why one Bradenton school is taking nutrition education to the next level.

  • Mobile farmer's market 'Green Stream' collaborating with school
  • Market manager teaching students how to prepare healthy options
  • Green Stream will be in neighborhood of school every Tuesday

At Visibile Men Academy, a Bradenton-based charter school for boys in low-income families, nutrition is key.

"Healthy habits should be universal," said founder Neil Phillips. "Those shouldn't be the purview of just the privileged."

Christa Leonard, manager of mobile farmers' market 'Green Stream', met the students and knew she wanted to help.

"As a single mom, I know what their parents are going through," Leonard told us. "So I know that it's a challenge when you're trying to get your kid to school, and get them home and bathed and food just gets put by the wayside, because it's not fast and it's not affordable."

So Leonard stepped into the classroom. Putting traditional lessons aside, she's teaching students where their food comes from and how to prepare healthy options in their own.

In this week's lesson, students prepared vegetable kebabs with farm-grown ingredients and fresh fruit dipped in frozen yogurt. The class left students excited about the new foods they had tried.

Leonard hopes the students will bring their excitement home to their parents. The only sentence that can't be spoken in her class is, "I don't like this."

The Green Stream accepts EBT cards and will be in the Pride Park neighborhood, adjacent to the school, every Tuesday from 3:30 - 5:30 p.m.