Youth cook healthy foods

FALLBROOK – The County of San Diego’s Department of Parks and Recreation - Fallbrook Community Center (FCC), La Paloma Elementary School and Healthy Adventures Foundation (HAF) have created a healthy cooking class to encourage Fallbrook’s youth to eat healthy for the rest of their lives.

HAF’s Chef Greg incorporates familiar and unfamiliar fruits and vegetables into healthy options for all to enjoy. This is cooking at a basic level, teaching the youth proper hand washing, kitchen safety, overall kitchen sanitation, proper knife skills, and how to use measuring cups and spoons.

Groups of 15 to 35 youth meet in the Community Center’s kitchen where HAF teaches them about nutritional information, flavoring foods with herbs and spices, and tasting healthy foods that they may not normally be willing to try.

Some examples of the great foods created have been spinach balls, mixed fruit yogurt with homemade granola parfaits, wheat crusted vegetable pizzas, baked potato chips and yogurt-fruit ambrosia.

The youth seem to always come back for seconds. They have fun in a respectful, fun atmosphere, where they come to learn something new about healthy foods, and leave with recipes and knowledge to share with their families. The program is about changing habits, so if HAF can get the youth to try something new, eat something healthy, and talk about it at home, they just might encourage mom and dad to try the recipes, too.