The Scott County 4-H Cooking program is exploring how 4-H youth in Scott County can become agents of change to address community food insecurity and other food systems issues in Scott County. Food insecurity is linked to many social and developmental issues for kids, including poor performance in schools and risky behaviors. By incorporating our already strong existing 4-H Cooking program the 4-H Agent included lessons that help youth learn about food systems issues and think about how they can make choices to secure their own health and food security while also improving things for others in Scott County. This 4-H Cooking program has provided over 60 young people, ages 9-18 years of age with the help of four volunteers the opportunity to learn hands on cooking skills, healthy eating habits, and learn more about food systems. Each month the youth learn a new recipe from the 4-H Cooking curriculum. Youth are divided up within four groups with one adult volunteer and at least one teen leader, where they make the complete recipe for their dinner. After completing the recipe youth learn about one of the MyPlate food groups that pertains to the recipe they made. The 4-H Youth Development Agent also leads a discussion on Food Systems, where it gets youth to start thinking about the correlation of food and agriculture, where their food comes from, the process it takes to get to get food from the farm to their table, the cost of food and how it relates to what we eat, how animals play a role in food systems, and address food justice issues by becoming a more responsible consumer and involved citizens. 

Curriculum used: University of Illinois Extension “4-H Cooking 101” and New York State 4-H, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s “Food Systems for Thought and Change”