TVLA: Cooking Matters Educates on Healthy Living

By Zac Holdren

In conjunction with students’ Nutrition and Wellness course, for three weeks, chefs and nutritionists came to TVLA and taught students on the art of healthy living. “Cooking Matters” partnered with Beaumont Hospital to put on the class.

Cookingmatters.org describes the program as, “Community partners that serve low-income families offer six-week Cooking Matters courses to adults, kids and families. Each course is team-taught by a volunteer chef and nutrition educator and covers meal preparation, grocery shopping, food budgeting and nutrition.”

Students spent an hour during each session learning about healthy alternatives, utilizing all of the basic food groups and stretching their budget to create a healthy meal.

After the nutrition lesson, students cooked a fresh, affordable meal with a professionally trained chef. Some meals included cheeseburger pasta, barley jambalaya, tofu stir-fry, baked chicken with apples and cinnamon and black bean chocolate brownies. The students were then provided the groceries to make the meals at home for their families at the end of each session.

During the fifth class, students took a field trip to the Taylor Meijer for a meal budget challenge. Students were given $10 and given the challenge to purchase the ingredients to make a meal for four and cover all of the basic food groups. Students earned credit and a completion certificate after the six class sessions.

TVLA looks forward to partnering with Cooking Matters and Beaumont again with more classes in the near future. With the successful launch of this program at TVLA, it will become a class offered annually.