We Can Teach This Thing Around

The Raw Ingredients

Cooking is a skill, just like reading, driving or balancing your cheque book. If no one teaches you, how do you learn? The truth is A) you stubble along, do your best and manage or B) you don't learn, you take a bus and bounce payments. If no one taught you how to read you would be sadly illiterate.

Society has decided that these skills are important so we teach language and math skills in school, We reward people for obtaining lessons in driving (for the safety of everyone on the road) by discounting insurance rates. We have decided that these skills are important for individuals and the future of society. So we teach.

The Results

Cooking is a skill we used to teach, grandparents and parents showing their children about good food, healthy meals and home cooking. Children could join clubs like 4H and learn even more. Remember when schools used to teach Home Economics?

Somewhere along the line, these skills became taken for granted or we as a society simply unconsciously decided that these skills were not vital to individuals. The time spent instructing cooking and Home Economics has been reassigned to learning skills to cope with our ever increasing pace of life and home cooking has been replaced by fast food, prepackaged meals and 'ready made in minutes'. At the onset of this shift could anyone have envisioned that we would be facing a day when people do not know how to cook, or that the health of our children and families would be deteriorating at a pace faster than the advancement of technology?

If you are looking for proof, you don't need to look any further than childhood obesity rates, the increase in heart disease and diabetes and the grocery cart of the family ahead of you in line at the supermarket.

Fortunately, we can turn this trend around, we can talk about nutrition, we can get the word out that what people eat really matters, not just for today for for the future. We can teach people how to cook again, we can encourage people to take advantage of resources within the community...

...We can make a difference! Join the conversation. Support Restore Family Nutrition, talk about food and nutrition, teach your kids to cook, teach other kids to cook. Lets turn this thing around!

Show your support by following @RFNutrition on twitter. Subscribe to updates of this Blog. Volunteer time to Restore Family Nutrition. Send us a message with your thoughts and concerns...lets turn up the conversation and support each other in the pursuit of good food and good health!

Community Centers

Great jewels in our region for promoting family, lifestyle and involvement, Community Centers are wonderful places. They are wonderful, and so many of them as well, host cooking classes.

This week, invitations have gone out to our Region's Community Centers asking them to join the Restore Family Nutrition team.

If you are visiting from a Community Center...welcome, please be sure to update us with your programs.

Take the opportunity to check with your Community Center about what programs they offer around food, cooking and nutrition. The programs are always fun and very reasonably priced!