Kitchen classroom empowers young chefs to pursue healthy choices in Kalamazoo

February 2, 2022

Summary: In Michigan, Kalamazoo area Middle schoolers are learning how to eat better and cook for themselves through The Learning Kitchen (TLK), a hands-on cooking and nutrition education program. TLK is designed to educate youth about the MyPlate food guidance system and to teach them to plan, shop for, and prepare (definitely their favorite part!) healthy meals and snacks on a limited budget.

Challenge: A 2019 Community Health Needs Assessment conducted by Bronson Healthcare found that Kalamazoo residents want better access to healthy food, and more education about how to prepare it. Socioeconomic challenges create unique barriers to nutrition and good health in Kalamazoo, where nearly 30% of the population is below the poverty line.

Solution: Bronson Healthcare and Kalamazoo Valley Community College (KVCC) partnered to offer TLK, funded by a SNAP-Ed grant from the Michigan Fitness Foundation (MFF). Each TLK session begins with an hour of nutrition education in the culinary theater of KVCC’s Culinary and Allied Health Building. Students get a taste of the college experience in a state-of-the-art environment that encourages them to consider the possibility of pursuing higher education. The students learn about USDA’s MyPlate, nutrients in specific foods, why they need to eat healthy foods, and how to keep food safe.

Then they move to KVCC’s community kitchen where kids get to practice washing, slicing, dicing, and cooking the healthy foods they just finished learning about. Rather than imprint a few rigid cooking instructions, instructors work to empower their students with basic kitchen and food prep skills they can use for a lifetime and share with their friends and families.

For the final TLK session, the entire class treks across the Bronson Healthy Living Campus to the micro-grocery located in the Bronson Hospital building. The students use $10 gift vouchers donated by the Bronson Health Foundation to learn how to budget wisely for healthy living.

“The students aren’t just tasting new foods made by someone else. They’re tasting foods they learned about and made themselves. … More than a simple cooking class for kids, TLK is designed to teach teens how to make healthier food choices for life,” said Bronson Health Education Supervisor and SNAP-Ed Program Director Chris Flood.

Sustaining success: To gauge program effectiveness, the students completed assessments at the beginning of the program and then again at the conclusion. Assessments are aligned with SNAP-Ed Evaluation Framework Indicator MT1. While it’s a challenge to get a true understanding of the longer-term effects so early in the program, program coordinators feel confident about TLK’s value in creating sustainable change. Because many of the students’ parents stayed for at least the nutrition lesson portion of each class, they were also exposed to education that may influence their families’ dietary habits. And every session was a chance for program coordinators to learn more about the community they serve.

KVCC and Bronson hope to continue presenting TLK when it is once again safe to do so following the COVID-19 pandemic, but in the meantime, they plan to provide virtual instruction through short, fun cooking videos they are developing. This will offer the added advantage of being able to reach even more kids at one time.