Author: Tara Duty
Planning Unit: Mercer County CES
Major Program: Nutrition and Food Systems General
Plan of Work: Accessing Nutritious Foods
Outcome: Initial Outcome
In January of 2023 I implemented Lunch N Learn, a food and nutrition program that demonstrates how to cook healthy recipes from a specially curated calendar. When I first started this program I would have the recipe prepared when participants arrived, we would try it together, talk about it and then have a nutrition lesson. Over time I took feedback from my participants and now we do a hybrid of cooking together and me preparing prior to them arriving. The majority of my participants are seniors. Some are widowed and prepare food for only one person, some have food allergies, and some have health concerns that prevent them from eating certain ingredients. We then taste the recipe and talk about how we would prepare it at home and if there are any adjustments we would make in order to encourage preparing the recipe at home. Once we have talked about the changes we would make to the recipe which would encourage our participants to make it at home, I then prepare the recipe a second time for them to try at our next meeting. These still have to be healthy changes like halving the recipe, or exchanging an ingredient that someone cannot eat. I have an average of 22 participants at this program monthly.
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