At some point during America’s urbanization and industrialization it was determined that the ideal life meant not getting your hands dirty. FoodCorps co-founder Debra Eschmeyer has another way of looking at it: “It’s not dirt, it’s soil.”

Staffed by students frustrated by what they saw in movies like Food Inc. and King Corn, FoodCorps has joined the fight against obesity supported in part by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The mission: to give all youth an enduring relationship with healthy food. For its first year, FoodCorps chose Arizona sites within the Navajo, White Mountain Apache and Tohono O’odham nations.

From soil comes life, connection and – it turns out – a different sense of the world and of taste. From the Boston Globe’s article on FoodCorps: “We get very excited to eat things we usually don’t like, like broccoli, spinach, peas, and carrots,’’ says Eva Muraga, 10. “We grew it, so we like it a lot more.’’