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“KidsCooK” is part of a developing non profit program to teach fifth grade kids how to cook tasty, whole, nutritious and affordable real food.  Teaching kids to cook empowers them to make smart decisions about what to eat and enables them to make a formidable contribution to their families.  We  capitalize on relationships with farmers at the market, making solid connections from the dirt to the dinner plate; from hard work to dignity; from responsible choices to healthy bodies and from social interaction to celebration—to eat great food and have fun making it!  It can all happen around real food.

We believe our kids want things that are real, honest and trustworthy.  It is a difficult challenge to distill those choices out of the onslaught of information they must navigate.

  • Advertising directed at children is estimated at over $17 billion annually – about 2.5 times more than what it was in 1992.1
  • Over the past two decades, the degree to which marketers have scaled up efforts to reach children is staggering. In 1983, they spent $100 million on television advertising to kids. Today, they pour roughly 150 times that amount into a variety of mediums that seek to infiltrate every corner of childrens’ worlds.2
  • According to a leading expert on branding, 80 percent of all global brands now deploy a “tween strategy.”3″

Read the full report here.

Our desire to equip 5th graders with cooking skills comes primarily from the urgent need to shift their eating patterns and to provide support for parents working to give their children healthier options.   We know:

  • “Childrens’ eating habits are formed by the time they’re twelve years old.” Cornell University Study, 1992.
  • As a result of rampant childhood obesity one in three children born after the year 2000 will likely develop Type II diabetes in their pre-adult years.
  • Quoting from New York School District, “…the more children are exposed to a food, the more they are likely to taste it and adopt it as a regular part of their diet.  There is no doubt in our minds that magical things happen when children have a hand in preparing their food.  All of a sudden they’re trying foods they never thought they’d like, which leads them to become more independent food explorers in their lives outside of school.”

“KidsCooK” is the focus program for a developing non-profit organization which is being funded privately through the pilot project term.  We will be securing funding grants for subsequent years as the program is replicated to more communities.

We will run three courses during the pilot project phase made possible by the assistance of lead donors with the goal of developing metrics and fine tuning the curriculum before entering the grant application process and completing the non profit organizational work.  We just completed our second course on August 31st  and will schedule the third course of our pilot series after coordinating with the public school calendar.  We meet on Tuesday afternoons at Hopelink  in Carnation, WA.

“KidsCooK” is led by Terrie Irish, a long time resident of the  Snoqualmie Valley along with extraordinary volunteers and cooks, Mary Griffin (Renton) , Michele Eaton(Duvall) and Katherine Abraham (Seattle).