Going bananas: the summer foodie club at Croydon’s Legacy Youth Zone aims to improve children’s understanding of good food
NADIA AZIZUDDIN visited the Legacy Youth Zone to witness the launch of an innovative project to teach youngsters how to eat more healthily
Learning on the job: Legacy Youth Zone members pick up quickly how to prepare meals in the kitchen. Photos: Jack Hall/PA Media Assignments
Supermarket chain Lidl has joined forced with national youth charity Onside to provide free Summer Clubs for children over the holidays, with hands-on cooking sessions that focus on healthy, quick and easy recipes that kids can help recreate at home.
This is the second year of Lidl Foodies Summer Clubs, but their first alongside Onside, who operate the Legacy Youth Zone on Whitehorse Road in Selhurst.
Expanding outside of the classroom and into community centres like Legacy, they aim to manage the absence of routine over the school summer holidays by getting children curious and engaged with healthy eating.
Through hands-on experience in the kitchen and learning more about nutrition, Foodies Summer Clubs hope to make food prep feel fun and exciting.
Surveys carried out by Lidl estimate that the majority of parents feel that the “school holidays put pressure on providing healthy meals”. Lidl’s Georgina Hall says that their research also shows “that kids really like learning about food – with more than half saying they’d love to learn how to cook”.
Lidl worked with clinical psychologist Dr Anna Colton to understand the value of structure around mealtimes for children, and how the summer holidays can disrupt this.
Smoothie ride: the epitome of healthy eating came when kids had to pedal to power a smoothie-maker
The summer clubs will provide “important foundations for building a good relationship with food”, which is what “determines how kids eat throughout their childhood, into adolescence, and adulthood.”
Croydon’s Legacy Youth Zone is staging these classes over the next few weeks. The inaugural cooking class gathered a lot of excitement from Legacy’s young members, along with the smoothie-making bicycle and the fresh fruit tasting.
The cooking class demonstrated the participatory approach that is behind the ethos of this programme, with youth leaders simply offering guidance while letting the children handle all of the decision-making and practical steps. This is not only effective in teaching the students how to cook, but also improves their confidence in all of the surrounding skills.
Important lessons were learned: some of the children tried a blueberry for the very first time, and others learned that bananas are not grown in England.
Jamie Masraff, CEO of Onside, says around 1,000 young people at their centres across the country will have the opportunity to take part in the scheme.
“The loss of routine and additional financial pressures of the school holidays, mean it’s important for children to keep their access to healthy meals and regular activities,” he said.
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