Students Get Cooking
Date: 6 Jul 2011
Students Get Cooking: Healthy Cooking Lessons for Nottingham Trent Students
The stereotypical student diet of baked beans and takeaways will be a thing of the past at Nottingham Trent University as a group of students became the first in the country to receive healthy cooking training from Let's Get Cooking, who run the largest network of healthy cooking clubs in England.
A group of 20 students learnt how to cook healthy meals, shop on a budget and received expert training on how to pass their newfound cooking skills onto their fellow students. They have since set up the first University-based Let's Get Cooking club, which will be one of the Student Union's approved societies on campus. There's a real appetite for cooking as the new society already has 300 students on a waiting list, who are all hungry to join up.
Beverley Lawe, lecturer and food technology specialist from Nottingham Trent University's School of Education, said, "The majority of our students are young people are living away from home for the first time. Today's students face a number of pressures and the training shows that cooking and eating a healthy balanced diet can be easy, and it covered issues such as how to shop wisely and make meals in batches that can be frozen in individual portions."
"We have hundreds of students who are keen to join the new Let's Get Cooking society. As well as encouraging healthy eating habits it will help to encourage the social aspect of cooking and eating together, which will help our first year students in particular to settle in to student life and make friends."
Following attending Let's Get Cooking training, students have said: "I have dyspraxia and never cooked as I did not find it easy to follow recipe instructions and had no confidence. I am really pleased with myself that I have a new skill and I now cook at home. Four sessions is just enough to get you started cooking at home." "We have found this really beneficial experience for our future teaching." "My mum never let me cook at home so when I went to University I had to teach myself. In these sessions I have learnt chopping and peeling techniques which I never knew before!"
Learning to cook healthy meals is proving to be an important way to encourage people to eat a healthier diet. Research for Let's Get Cooking has shown that over half of club members (58%) said they were eating more healthily after their involvement with the programme, while 90% reported that they had used their new cooking skills at home.
Let's Get Cooking is a programme led by the School Food Trust, which gives adults and children the confidence, skills and knowledge to make healthy food choices and cook good food. It provides training, resources and support to help a wide range of organisations set up healthy cooking programmes for people of all ages in locations such as workplaces, schools, universities and Children's Centres.
So far more nearly one million people have developed their cooking skills through the Let's Get Cooking programme.
For more information about Let's Get Cooking in the South West, please contact Natalie Greenslade on 07795 427750, or email: natalie.greenslade@sft.gsi.gov.uk
