Cooking! It's the foundation of our civilization! Without food we don't live, more particularly without healthy food we can't live well! Obesity is a hot topic that everyone here has heard of, child obesity is increasing every day at a very scary rate. Hovering around 5% in the early 1960's, rates of obesity has more than tripled to 19% by 2019. If these trends continue, 57% of children will have obesity as adults in 2050. As of right now 19.7% of kids and 41.9% of adults are obese! Its important to note that adult are also obese (almost 50% of the USA) since they are the ones feeding children.
But what if children could feed themselves, If we could start teaching kids how to cook early in middle school we could help children and parents , a study done stated Cooking With Kids increased fruit and vegetable preferences , especially with vegetables, this is important because Very few children in the United States (U.S.) meet the recommended daily intake for produce: less than 50% of children consume enough fruits, and less than 12% consume enough vegetables. Findings suggest that culinary literacy programs focusing on vegetables may drive factors associated with dietary behavior, help with self-efficacy, and acceptance of vegetables. Now any parents here could agree that a child willing to help make dinner is a blessing and if that same child could not only help but make a heathy dinner by themselves it would be astounding. Getting children easy access to such a skill isn't out of reach, just adding one more elective to schools would benefit everyone.
Imagine a world were kids make their own snacks, a world where kids are more likely to pick up a carrot than candy, a world where people are happy and healthy and not sitting in fast food lines waiting to eat the slop they throw in a bag. This can be accomplished not only by adding cooking classes to middle schools but you could teach your kids at home as well.
