Braddock Youth Project Food Literacy Curriculum

Abstract for Braddock Youth Project Food Literacy Curriculum Background: Learning to cook is an essential life skill, which unfortunately is not compulsory in our public school curricula and has disappeared from many homes across the Western World. Numerous factors have moved us toward a steady diet of unhealthy processed foods laden with mass quantities of sugar, sodium, fat, and chemical preservatives. Social, political, and economic climates have created a food system that encourages consumption of poor-quality, industrially processed food. Our poor diet has lead to a public health crisis, the likes of which the world has never seen. Rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension are steadily rising, along with the associated
Food and cooking skills/food preparation are important for several reasons related to health, knowledge, empowerment, engagement, culture, food security, and fun. An engaging cooking skills program targeting youth builds self-efficacy, food knowledge and literacy, self-confidence, and self-esteem, while potentially improving the social determinants of health. Cooking skills programs are effective and necessary interventions that not only provide the opportunity for practical application of life skills, but also the opportunity for social connectedness among peers and role modeling for career planning and potentially higher level education. We've reached a point as a nation where our lack of food knowledge and basic cooking skills is having a negative impact on our overall health and life expectancy. For the first time in recorded history, younger generations are expected to live shorter lives than their parents. The cooking curriculum we have implemented at BYP is a chance for us to arm our youth with sensible, practical knowledge they can take into the world and actually use for the rest of their
Beyond the cooking, nutrition, and food safety instruction, we have incorporated opportunities to learn about the social, cultural, environmental, and economic implications of food. In short, the purpose of incorporating cooking curriculum into the programming at BYP is to empower our youth to make better nutritional choices, to increase their knowledge of real foods, and to spark an interest in cooking. The hope is that cooking real meals for themselves will improve their overall health and quality of life; instill a sense of community and personal pride; and give them knowledge they can share with others. On a Personal Note: My name is Ben Blatt and this will be my second summer serving at The Braddock Youth Project. My background is in food service, education, and public health. I cannot stress enough the importance of programs like the cooking sessions at BYP in mitigating the incidence of chronic disease and improving quality of life for our youth. Even though summer programming is only a few weeks, we incorporate a variety of skills in a variety of ways through a variety of cuisines to make sure that everyone gets something from the