Cooking 101 — Schooling Children in the Culinary Arts
By Sharon Palmer, RD
Today’s Dietitian
Vol. 8 No. 7 P. 40

In light of America’s obesity crisis, it’s more important than ever to educate kids about nutrition and cooking—and the time is ripe for dietitians to join the movement.

Today’s culinary world for kids is a vastly different place than ours was. While we were likely raised on a staple diet of home-cooked, family favorites eaten around the dinner table, kids today come to the table with a plethora of food influences—from routine fast food runs and pantry raids for convenience foods to the sophistication of The Food Network and upscale restaurants. And their food and dining preferences, as well as their knowledge and ability to cook, are just as varied.

Kids’ Food Fix
“I think some kids are very skilled and exposed, but probably most aren’t. I don’t think it has to do with economics. If they are raised by grandma, they may be exposed to more cooking,” says Elaine Magee, MPH, RD, author of Someone’s in the Kitchen with Mommy: More Than 100 Easy Recipes and Fun Crafts for Parents and Kids (McGraw-Hill, 1997) and Comfort Food Makeovers: Healthy Alternatives to Your Favorite Homestyle Dishes (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2006).

Kids come with eating scenarios of every imaginable possibility. Many latch-key kids may be doing more cooking than their parents, microwaving quesadillas for dinner, while others rely on neighborhood burger joints or convenience foods to fill their growling stomachs. Dual-income households produce busy parents who often pick up take-out on the way home as a solution to the age-old question, “What’s for dinner?” Many parents have their children’s after-school hours so scheduled that meals are merely a series of drive-thrus on the way to the next activity. It’s getting increasingly difficult for kids to find their way to a dinner table for a home-cooked meal.

On the other side of the coin, the food experience has grown trendy, prompting some children to become addicted to cooking shows and follow the career paths of chefs like Todd English as if they were the hottest teen heartthrob. The latest trend du jour? Children’s cooking birthday parties that feature a cooking instructor who comes to the birthday child’s house, helps coordinate a cooking activity, and lets the kids partake of the spoils. But these budding gourmands are in the minority. Connie Liakos Evers, MS, RD, author of How to Teach Nutrition to Kids, 3rd edition (24 Carrot Press, 2006), says, “Mini-chefs are rare. Most [children] have no basic cooking skills at all.”

The sad truth is that many kids, following in their parents’ footsteps, are sorely out of touch with the very basics of food—where it comes from and the simple facts of food shopping and preparation. Dietitians report finding kids who can’t even recognize a whole potato or identify where orange juice comes from. “Kids don’t know where food comes from, how it grows, or how to shop. There are lots of wonderful programs like 5 A Day and MyPyramid. These are wonderful words, but people don’t understand them. They need hands-on experience. When they actually get to touch, feel, smell—that’s the basis for learning,” says Jill McCauley, owner of Traditions on Chestnut, a cooking school for children and adults in Marshfield, Wis.

This cooking crisis starts with the parents. As more households have both parents bringing home the bacon, nobody’s left to fry it up. And if the parents aren’t cooking, who’s around to teach the kids? “I find a lack in basic cooking skills in the adult cooking classes that I teach. Parents aren’t modeling cooking for their children, so the kids are growing up without basic cooking skills,” says Mindy Hahn, RD, LD, a cooking instructor. Evers adds, “These young parents are the first generation of noncookers. They grew up using the microwave.”

Whatever the reason behind the diminishing culinary skills, one thing is for sure: When cooking occurs less frequently in the home, nutritional quality can suffer. With today’s widespread concern over childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes rates, culinary education for children and their families as a method of improving nutritional outcome has become a hot topic. How can you expect children to follow healthy eating messages when nobody in the family can even cook?

“Americans need to be eating whole foods to avoid all of these nasty diseases. Kids don’t know how to do that. They are mostly microwaving, which is not a very optimal diet,” says Eileen Behan, RD, author of Fit Kids (Pocket Books, 2001), a book that includes tips on how to teach kids basic cooking. “We have all of this information for healthy lifestyles, but we don’t teach how to do basic cooking. People are outsourcing food,” says Linda Godfrey, MS, RD, LD, SFNS, chair of the School Nutrition Services Dietetic Practice Group.

Cooking Up Benefits for Kids
The benefits of getting children cooking are abundant. A nutrition lesson can be easy to digest when it happens during a cooking activity. The American Heart Association includes, as a recommendation for overweight children and teens, a reduction in the number of meals eaten outside the home, structured times for family meals, and the involvement of children in meal planning, shopping, and food preparation.

“Kids absolutely love food and cooking. You can get the nutrition message in while cooking together. You can bring it down to their level. You’re not just the expert coming in,” says Evers. Magee points out that children who learn to cook are less likely to turn to processed foods and eating out and are more likely to try to like the food they have a hand in making. Hahn agrees. “Another benefit is an interest in eating healthy foods, as well as being more open to trying new ingredients. Children are less finicky eaters when they have played a part in preparing the meal,” she says.

“Early exposure to cooking sets the stage for a lifetime of feeling at ease, instead of terror, around food preparation. The benefits of children learning to cook are familiarity with recipes and measurement tools, which can lead to less reliance on convenience foods when older,” says Mary Saucier Choate, MS, RD, LD, the food and nutrition educator at the Co-op Food Stores in Hanover, N.H. Choate teaches nutrition education classes for school-age children and is considering adding food preparation classes to her curriculum.

Teaching kids to cook can also help them get in touch with their food supply—all the way from the farm to the dinner plate. Kids can learn about the benefits of local, sustainable agriculture and seasonal foods while tossing a salad.

Evers believes teaching kids to cook can influence the entire family’s eating decisions. “Today’s children have a lot more power in the family. Children are making so many decisions. They are powerful little people,” says Evers, who reports that parents often find they eat healthier when their children learn to cook.

Some of the strongest benefits of getting children cooking, especially with their family, are psychological. Children can feel a sense of accomplishment and contribution to the family, increased confidence, and enjoy spending quality time with their parents. As family members meet to stir the mixing bowl, they also stir up family stories, recipes, and traditions that they can hand down through the generations. Learning to cook is also a lifelong skill children can call on for the rest of their life. “You’re empowering children by teaching them to cook. It crosses all cultural barriers and ability levels,” says Evers.

If a child is involved in cooking, the likelihood of eating family meals together increases, and most agree that family meals are a good thing. Children who eat regularly with their families have fewer behavior problems in school; are less likely to get involved in high-risk behaviors such as drugs, alcohol, and early sexual behavior; and eat more vegetables, fruits, and dairy products. “The family table is one of the most important things we can use to increase the health, emotional, and physical well-being of children,” says Behan.

What’s Cooking in the Classroom?
“Cooking is basically nonexistent in public school education. There is a lot of emphasis on standardized testing. Cooking is not part of this, even though it is a lifetime skill. There’s not time for nutrition education, let alone cooking education,” says Godfrey, who retired from her post as the child nutrition program coordinator for the Shelby County (Ala.) Board of Education and now consults and teaches. “Home economics or family consumer science was taken in high school and it was mostly required in 7th and 8th grade. It’s not the case anymore. I found that when I even teach dietetic college students, they don’t have cooking skills,” says Godfrey.

Godfrey hopes the school wellness policy will help highlight the need for cooking skills to be taught in classrooms. The children’s health crisis has caused people to brainstorm over how to better teach children about food and nutrition, and many schools are coming up with a new take on culinary education. Alice Waters, the owner of Chez Panisse, has taken on educating children through her Chez Panisse Foundation. Through this program, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, Calif., offers The Edible Schoolyard, a 1-acre school garden and kitchen schoolroom in which students grow, cook, and eat the food.

Johnson & Wales College of Culinary Arts, in conjunction with Healthy Kids Challenge, put together a program for middle school students called Healthy Heritage Recipe Contest, which focuses on creating a healthy recipe from the student’s heritage. The prizes include scholarship dollars, cookbooks and appliances, and a visit from a Johnson & Wales chef.

Janice C. Baranowski, MPH, RD, LD, assistant professor of pediatrics at USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center in Houston, performs research on how to get kids to eat fruits and vegetables. Her team is creating curriculum for schools focused on learning about fruits and vegetables. “In the classroom, part of the curriculum is make it, test it, and make it at home,” says Baranowski, who reports an increase in intake of one fruit and vegetable serving per day after the program was tested in 26 Houston schools for five weeks.

Since it’s so difficult to get nutrition education into schools, Baranowski focused on developing a medieval computer game in which the bad guys steal the fruits and vegetables in the kingdom, and for the player to become a knight, he or she must visit a virtual kitchen and digitally prepare a recipe. “Kids generally know that fruits and vegetables are good for them, but you need to make it fun. You can give kids the power and enable them to make recipes,” says Baranowski.

Cooking With Kids in All the Right Places
Kids’ cooking classes are popping up in all sorts of places—from children’s hospitals to grocery stores. Even fashionable hot spots such as Sur La Table and Whole Foods Market are hosting children’s cooking classes. Culinary schools targeted at children, such as Les Petite Gourmettes in Scottsdale, Ariz., are thriving. Gaspergoo is a children’s show that features a delicious mixture of animation and live-action set in an enchanted world of food, friends, and family.

“What really got me interested in a cooking school to reach children is that I was very concerned about the obesity epidemic,” says McCauley, whose cardiologist husband supports her efforts. Traditions on Chestnut offers children’s cooking classes for $35 per class and at a nominal fee for the local Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops.

Julie Shapero, RD, LD, a dietitian at TriHealth Fitness & Health Pavilion, a hospital-based fitness center in Cincinnati, teaches in an award-winning kids summer program called Camp Crazyfood. “Cooking skills for all ages are neglected. It makes a lot of sense to start with young kids. Kids are much more likely to try something if they make it themselves. We have fun activities and sneak in nutrition so that they don’t realize it,” says Shapero, who includes food and nutrition scavenger hunts, pottery spoon-rest projects, field trips to grocery stores, fun with exercise, and even art (painting foods with gelatin) as part of her creative curriculum.

Vickie L. James, RD, LD, creator and director of Healthy Kids Challenge, a guide for schools, families, and communities with healthy change ideas for kids, reports that they identify “KidLinks,” people who work with children and influence their choices, such as teachers, parents, media, and other children. These KidLinks may be guided to creatively bring the skills of cooking back into children’s daily lives. Through their materials such as A la Cart Breakfast, A la Cart Snack Attack, and Food Museum, Healthy Kids Challenge provides tools for integrating healthy eating messages into practical applications such as food preparation. “We’re trying to keep it simple, involve the kids to make better food choices, make it fun, and make mealtime an integral part of the family unit,” says James, who reports that their tools are used widely in various childhood education programs, such as classrooms, community groups, parks & recreation, summer programs, after care programs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H, Boys & Girls Clubs, and church groups.

Share Our Strength’s Operation Frontline is a nutrition education program that fights childhood hunger by teaching families how to make healthy and budget-wise food choices. The classes are run by volunteer chefs and dietitians who teach about nutrition, cooking, and budgeting to low-income adults and children.

Choices for Children works to provide child care services in the community and provides nutrition education through many vehicles, such as cooking. Several years ago, the organization provided cooking carts for their child care centers that could be wheeled into different classrooms and offer education for children’s cooking activities. “Nutrition is a neglected area for young children. This is a wonderful avenue to let kids get involved,” says Doris Fredericks, MEd, RD, executive director of Choices for Children. Fredericks would like to see programs offering field trips to farmers’ markets followed by cooking classes utilizing the purchased food.

Private practice dietitians are even expanding their business offerings by adding children’s cooking classes to their services, even promoting it on their Web sites. Hahn teaches her “Kids in the Kitchen” cooking classes at churches, schools, libraries, and community colleges.

The Dietitian’s Challenge
“With the increase of type 2 diabetes in children as well as adults, it is vital for community dietitians to take a role in leading healthy cooking education classes,” says Hahn. Dietitians have plenty of opportunities to answer the call, but these are opportunities that typically won’t come with job advertisements or salaries. It’s going to take creativity to worm your way into teaching today’s kids to cook.

Clinical dietitians in hospital settings can seek community support and a positive public relations buzz by pushing for a cooking workshop for kids in local schools or hospitals. Looking at the ramifications of unfettered childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes carried on into adulthood should give hospitals plenty of incentive to get working on kids’ cooking skills in their own backyard.

Dietitians passionately interested in this area can seek the increasing number of grants associated with childhood wellness to help fund local programs. Evers believes that if you can find a way to fund culinary education for kids, it would be vastly popular. “Dietitians can find grant money to do it. That’s the best way to compensate it. School districts would be thrilled,” says Evers.

For example, the American Dietetic Association Foundation partnered with the General Mills Foundation to develop the Champions for Healthy Kids grant program. Each year, the foundation awards 50 grants of $10,000 each to community-based groups that develop creative ways to help children adopt a balanced diet and physically active lifestyle.

In the end, maybe this is your chance to pay it forward and log some volunteer hours in your own community. James says, “The schools can’t do it alone. It takes a village to raise a child.” Evers adds, “I think it’s a rewarding way to give back.” Godfrey believes that although most principals are receptive to a dietitian volunteering in their schools, volunteering activities should be coordinated through the child nutrition director. Dietitians can also volunteer their time in teaching cooking in settings such as preschools, after-school programs, children’s organizations, PTA, and the community. If you’ve got a green thumb, you can even help your local school create a garden.

James often speaks at dietetic conferences, helping dietitians focus on how they can get involved with children. “Don’t just sit back and say, ‘I work in a hospital in a clinical setting. This doesn’t apply to me.’ Ask, ‘How can I make a difference in child obesity?’ Take a step forward in the profession. We have the knowledge and skills; we know what’s necessary,” urges James.

James issues a challenge to dietitians across the country: “This is a key time for dietitians to lead the way for change. Who is the leader for healthy change for children? Tag, you’re it!”

— Sharon Palmer, RD, is a contributing editor at Today’s Dietitian and a freelance food and nutrition writer in southern California.

Resources
Want to try your hand at getting children and families to cook? The following are some helpful resources from our experts to get you started.

• Comfort Food Makeovers: Healthy Alternatives to Your Favorite Homestyle Dishes by Elaine Magee, MPH, RD (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2006)

• Fit Kids by Eileen Behan, RD (Pocket, 2001)

• How to Teach Nutrition to Kids, 3rd edition by Connie Liakos Evers, MS, RD (24 Carrot Press, 2006)

• Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family by Ellyn Satter, MS, RD, LCSW, BCD (Kelcy Press, 2006)

• Someone’s in the Kitchen with Mommy: More Than 100 Easy Recipes and Fun Crafts for Parents and Kids by Elaine Magee, MPH, RD (McGraw-Hill, 1997)

• Champions for Healthy Kids, www.generalmills.com/corporate/commitment/champions.aspx

• Choices for Children, www.choices4children.org

• The 5 A Day Program, www.5aday.gov

• Healthy Kids Challenge, www.healthykidschallenge.com

• Johnson & Wales College of Culinary Arts Healthy Heritage Recipe Contest, http://culinary.jwu.edu/content808.html

• National Dairy Council, www.nationaldairycouncil.org

• National Food Service Management Institute, www.olemiss.edu/depts/nfsmi/index.html

• Nutrition for Kids, www.nutritionforkids.com

• Share Our Strength Operation Frontline, www.strength.org/what/operationfrontline

• U.S. Department of Education, www.ed.gov

• USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine, www.kidsnutrition.org

• USDA Food and Nutrition Service Child Nutrition Program, www.fns.usda.gov/cnd