The School Nutrition Program offers cooking and gardening classes to our students in Trent Hills. The goal of the program is to inspire young minds to connect again with nutritious food by teaching them how to grow, harvest, and cook their own meals from scratch.
Our primary goal of introducing this program to grade 8 students in our community was to get students back in the kitchen, teaching them how to make nutritious recipes from start to finish. No matter what continuing education they choose, everyone needs to know this life skill of cooking. With diabetes, heart disease and cancer continually on the rise, teaching students how to cook nourishing, whole foods will benefit them for life. With rising food costs, we also wanted to be mindful of recipes that were low cost with ingredients that were easily available.
Teaching students how to cook is life changing on its own but we wanted to take this program one step further with our combined gardening program. The last 3 months of the Nutrition Program transitions to the outdoors to learn how to grow their own food in the community garden. With the rising food costs, learning how to grow their own food will be just as beneficial as cooking their own food. Combining growing food from seed to harvesting to cooking that food in a nutritious recipe then sharing that dish with classmates really takes these students through the full cycle of the food to plate experience.
Additional Notes