Learning to cook from scratch provides people with the skills, information and confidence to eat well. Cooking skills classes teach how to cook healthy, affordable meals and offer advice on shopping and budgeting. Classes include key nutritional messages and teach the Eatwell Guide, thus empowering people to make healthy food choices.
Flourishing Families run cookery clubs that focus on teaching basic cookery skills to whole families. These clubs improve diet and nutrition, increase confidence, and help families to budget for healthy meals.
“I spent 2 years fighting in the courts to get custody of my little girls because they were found abandoned on the street at 4am. Flourishing Families taught us to cook together. Now, sitting in our kitchen is a folder of Flourishing Families recipes. Each evening we look at the folder together and decide what we’ll cook for tea the next evening.”
Danny, father of two.
Ministry of Food Leeds provides structured cooking programmes to support adults to learn basic cooking skills and healthy eating messages. Sustained behaviour changes that improve health over time has been seen from those who have completed the programme.
For example, one participant, Mr S, seemed very shy and introverted at his first classes. However, as the course progressed Mr S excitedly spoke of the meals he had recreated at home, cooking from scratch using the vegetables he had sourced in Leeds Market, and how he had increased the amount of fruit he eats. Through attending Ministry of Food, Mr S gained more than the ability to cook meals, his confidence and ability to converse with his new friends also vastly improved.
“I haven’t bought a ready meal since joining Ministry of Food”
Mr S