Cooking Matters to fourth-graders from Farmington, Maine - and this class taught them new cooking skills (and some nutrition lessons!) they’ll be able to show off for a lifetime.
We’re empowering families to get back into the kitchen.
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| — | A Cooking Matters volunteer in Denver, Colo., talks about how the program helps families prepare healthy, delicious meals on a budget. |
I get great satisfaction from hearing people tell me they feel better, and have made improvements to their diet. Despite all the challenges they may have, to say one change has increased their well-being or outlook is tremendous. It’s incredible that food plays such a huge role in how someone feels.
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Cooking Matters volunteer Liza Ruzer “Cooking Matters: Teaching healthy eating to lower-income communities,” Contra Costa Times, April 13, 2011 |
Encourage healthy food choices.
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| — | This is just one part of Share Our Strength’s plan to help end child hunger in the United States. To achieve this goal, Share Our Strength created Operation Frontline, which is a chef-led nutrition and cooking education program specifically designed to help low-income families prepare nutritious meals on a budget. For our part, the ConAgra Foods Foundation is the proud national sponsor of Operation Frontline. |
Chef Tom Colicchio, whose mother ran a school lunch program, talks about how school lunch can help fight child hunger in this CNN interview.
Learn more about fighting child hunger at Feeding America and Share Our Strength’s websites.
(Source: CNN)
Chef Jose Andres shares his recommendations for a week’s worth of nutritious, affordable meals with White House Chef Sam Kass as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign.
When planning a week’s worth of meals on a very limited income, some parents aren’t sure how to make ends meet and provide their families with nutritious meals. Share Our Strength’s Operation Frontline, which is nationally sponsored by the ConAgra Foods Foundation, helps these families by teaching them nutrition, food safety and budgeting skills that will last a lifetime.
Operation Frontline: The keys to success
Author: Kori Reed, ConAgra Foods Foundation Executive Director
Nearly three years ago, I learned about Operation Frontline, a program operated by the Share Our Strength. I was immediately impressed with the program and its goals.
Essentially, Operation Frontline leverages the strength of the culinary community to teach families how to prepare nutritious meals on a limited budget. Operation Frontline’s behavioral-based approach empowers kids and parents with the knowledge and skills to make healthy meals with the resources available to them.
Finding innovative programs like Operation Frontline and expanding those programs to reach more people is core to how the ConAgra Foods Foundation makes an impact in the community, specifically with regard to the areas of hunger and nutrition education.
Since learning more about the program and its potential to make a difference, the ConAgra Foods Foundation has provided Share Our Strength with more than $3 million in funding, which has been used to increase the number of Operation Frontline sites.
By investing in Operation Frontline and helping expanding the program’s ability to teach more people about nutrition, food choices and more, we’ve had a positive impact on the people who enrolled in the program. In 2009, Operation Frontline’s accomplishments included:
- 87 percent of adults who participated in the program said their cooking skills, and therefore their ability to make healthy meals, had improved.
- 96 percent of kids who joined their parents in the Side-by-Side courses said they enjoyed doing so. And when kids enjoy preparing their meals, they’re more likely to eat them.
- 69 percent of adults said they were eating more fruit and vegetables after they completed the course than before the course.
Having seen Operation Frontline’s promise in its early stages, I am thrilled to see these types of results that show the program is having an impact on people’s lives. It embodies our foundation’s platform of Nourish Today, Flourish Tomorrow as we work to ensure families have access to food and facts about food so that we can all flourish.
Photo Credit: Photo used with the permission of Share Our Strength.
