Many people believe that it is too expensive and time consuming to prepare healthy, filling, and nutritious meals for their families. The folks at Foodlink take issue with that opinion and have been hard at work teaching classes to residents of the city of Rochester that show just how quick, easy, and cost-effective it can be to prepare a healthy meal for your family.

Cooking Matters
Through Foodlink’s Cooking Matters courses, a series of two-hour classes that meet once a week for six weeks, more and more families are not only learning about the benefits of healthy dining, they’re being empowered to serve up nutritional meals. Cooking Matters is a national program that works to make sure all kids have the healthy food they need every day. The free, interative hands-on kitchen workshops focus on every aspect of eating: from purchasing healthy foods to the best ways to prepare safe and easy nutritious meals. The classes aim to teach participants to shop smarter, use nutritional information to make healthier choices, and cook delicious, affordable meals. All recipes featured in the classes, along with other nutritional tips, are available for free at cookingmatters.org.
“Foodlink’s vision is a healthy, hunger-free community, and along those lines our mission is to end hunger and to leverage the power of food to build a healthier community,” says Alyssa Bennett, the Community Programs Manager at Foodlink. “We take into account where the families in our community are and what they need to accomplish the goals we have for healthy eating. We see nutritional education as an important initiative for our target population to help them live healthy lives. We teach them basic cooking skills so they can prepare a nutritious meal that fits into their budget while learning the concepts related to nutrition, the My Plate concept, and what it means to eat healthy.” The My Plate concept emphasizes the five food groups that serve as the building blocks for a healthy diet: dairy, fruits, grains, protein, and vegetables. The program takes a practical approach, tackling topics such as how to plan out a shopping list of nutritious food for the week, how to make and stick to a food shopping budget, how to properly measure the necessary ingredients of a meal, and how to safely prepare food for the whole family to enjoy.
Bennett says there were 411 participants in the Cooking Matters classes in 2015, with class size averaging between 12 and 15 participants. There are different curricula for parents, families, children, teenagers, adults, and for people living with diabetes. According to the group’s mission statement, the program is specifically tailored to help low-income families become “empowered with the skills to stretch their food budgets and cook healthy meals so their children get nutritious food at home,” and is offered in conjunction with the national No Kid Hungry campaign that aims to end childhood hunger in the United States.
Locally, the Cooking Matters classes started in 2011 and are run with the help of volunteers who have been trained at Foodlink. “The health of our population, especially in our city, is a great concern,” says Holland Brown, a volunteer chef in the program. “A program like this is important because everyone should be empowered to feed themselves and be responsible for their own health and nourishment.”
The classes aim to connect participants to the many food resources available to them in the community. “The way the class is setup with a set curriculum, it is very easy to absorb the lessons,” adds Brown. “Every class has a classroom lesson, a cooking lesson, and a nutrition lesson with suggested recipes that go along with the lesson taught that day. The adults get groceries to bring home with them so you’re applying the lessons when you get home and cook for your family.” Bennett says many of the students in class are not aware of the city’s assorted farmer’s markets, community gardens, and farm stands that can give them easier access to the healthy food they crave.
When it comes to serving a family dinner, fast food delivers a rapid meal, but not necessarily a nutritious one. With the abundance of fast food restaurants and convenience stores in the city, it can be easy for families to turn to these establishments for their meals. But while any of the assorted national fast food chains in town can provide families with a meal in a hurry, most of the items lack proper nutritional values, says Anne Palumbo, a volunteer at Foodlink who has served as a chef, an assistant chef, and a nutritionist for the Cooking Matters students.
To illustrate the point, students are tasked with what Bennett calls the “blubber burger” activity, where they can see first-hand how much fat is in a fast food burger. Participants are given fast food menus, two hamburger buns, and a can of Crisco, and then asked to calculate how many grams of fat are contained in a typical fast food meal. “The results are shocking; it’s quite a visual representation and it serves as an awakening, especially for the parents and the young kids when they see just how much fat they’re consuming in their fast food meal,” says Palumbo.
Foodlink’s vision is a healthy, hunger-free community, and along those lines our mission is to end hunger and to leverage the power of food to build a healthier community. Alyssa Bennett, Community Programs Manager at Foodlink
Plaumbo, who has helped with 15 Cooking Matters courses, continues, “We talk about empty calories versus nutritious calories, and how doing well in school and in sports, as well as looking and feeling good, are all directly tied to what we put into our bodies. Fast food might be quick, convenient and cheap, but it’s all empty calories. Whole grains and other essential nutrients will stay in their bodies longer, and they take longer to digest so they’re not always hungry.”
Equally as important as stressing how the right types of foods make a positive impact on the body, the classes also emphasize what types of foods to avoid, such as high-sugar soft drinks and juices. The participants are also taught the importance of reading nutritional labels to learn the truth behind what they’re putting into their bodies.
Utilizing a one-time workshop called Cooking Matters at the Store, trained educators, who are well-versed in Foodlink’s methods, lead adults in a practical, real-world shopping trip where they put their new-found food shopping savvy to the test. The adults are tasked with shopping for healthy, nutritious meals that contain all five major food groups while sticking to a budget. More than 1,200 city of Rochester residents benefitted from this single workshop last year alone.
For the program’s teenagers, Foodlink offers a cook-off challenge where the class is divided into teams and each team must prepare a healthy meal, from start to finish, demonstrating the lessons learned along the way. “People come into the program thinking they don’t know how to cook healthy meals for their families,” Brown says. “Once they have received the instruction and take it home and practice what they’ve learned in the classroom, they realize it’s not as hard as they thought. The kids who take our cooking and nutritional classes really get into the subject and they come away from the classes with a basket of knowledge they take into their own lives.”
John Boccacino is a contributing writer Rochester & Genesee Valley Parent Magazine.
For more information about the Cooking Matters classes, visit cookingmatters.org.
To sign up for a class, call (585) 436-FOOD. For more information about Foodlink, visit
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