TKCM Joins with Healthy Food Choices in Schools to Promote Family Cooking

Introducing children to the joys of cooking instills in them a life-long appreciation for the food on their plates. But for these lessons to stick, kids have to get their hands dirty and actually participate in the process.

The Kids Cook Monday (TKCM) partners with the Healthy Food Choices in Schools Community of Practice (CoP) by contributing peer-reviewed articles and webinars to the group. With over 3,000 members, the CoP has become a one-stop source for organizations looking to promote healthy food choices in school food environments.

For the first webinar, TKCM showed a real-life example of how an after-school cooking program was introduced to a Brooklyn elementary school. The second webinar featured commentary from the New Jersey Healthy Kids Initiative, and spoke to the importance of culinary literacy when trying to educate children on the benefits of trying to cook or encouraging their parents to cook more meals at home.

The two webinars were shown to more than 100 total attendees, and were the most viewed pieces of content for the CoP that year. Inspired by TKCM webinars, two members of Healthy Food Choices in Schools Community of Practice have conducted their own after-school TKCM cooking classes and secured local media coverage. TKCM continues to work with the CoP to promote culinary literacy and family cooking.