AURORA —Bowls of sliced mango, crispy green beans, silky hummus and other fiber-rich foods floated around one of the instruction rooms in the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center. About 20 Aurora-area residents sniffed and nibbled the snacks that were picked to replace things like cookies, chips and soda in their diets.
Lequisha Marquez, 13, picked up a wedge of raw jicama and popped it into her mouth.
“I’ve had it before,” Lequisha said. “It’s not bad. It’s crunchy like chips, but it’s better for you.”
Lequisha was learning how to incorporate more fiber into her daily meals during a free, six-week course called Cooking Matters.
Cooking Matters is a cooking demonstration program created by Share Our Strength, a 30-year-old national organization working to end childhood hunger. Students in a Cooking Matters course are taught by a local nutrition educator and volunteer chef to change unhealthy shopping patterns and cook wholesome meals that average $1.26 per person, per meal.
“Cooking Matters provides us with all the recipes and they’re already proportioned out that way,” said Laura Retzer, research and prevention coordinator with Children’s Hospital Colorado and the organizer for the Anschutz Cooking Matters program. “We get a stipend to buy all the groceries (needed to make this recipe), and all of the participants go home with groceries.”
Each of the six classes includes a nutrition lecture, a cooking demonstration and a bag of groceries to replicate the day’s demonstration at home.
Cooking Matters is funded through an arm of the Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that provides educational programs for people eligible for SNAP — formerly called food stamps — to help them make healthy food choices on a limited budget.
Retzer said the class was introduced to the health and wellness center through a partnership with Share Our Strength and Children’s Hospital Colorado. Families participating in the Aurora program were all recommended through the Child Health Clinic and the weight management program at Children’s, often called the GoodLIFE Clinic.
At the health and wellness center, Cooking Matters classes are designed by Michelle Cardel, a dietitian and pediatric nutrition doctor with the University of Colorado Denver, and Mariah Pimental, a student in the Johnson and Wales culinary nutrition program.
“We base the classes on the types of questions that the families ask,” Cardel said. “Last week, they wanted to know about healthier breakfast options, so we found a recipe and designed the lecture component off that.”
During class Aug. 14, families were learning how to make orange oatmeal pancakes. Before Pimental took to the hot plate, Cardel passed around bags of grains and oats and described their fiber content to the class.
Laquisha sat with her aunt, Melissa Magallon, 31, and sliced strawberries to garnish the pancakes.
“We used to eat a lot, but we found out that Lequisha was borderline diabetic when she was 12, so we had to cut that back,” Magallon said. “It was hard to make (her) understand why we had to change her diet at first, but then we started seeing the difference in her weight.”
When she found out that she was a high risk for diabetes, two years ago, Laquisha said she wanted to cry.
“I was 315 pounds,” she said. “Now I’m down to 225. Changing my (diet) was challenging, but I learned to live with it. I’m happy and proud of how far I’ve come.”
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, or mmitchell@denverpost.com
Aurora cooking matters fall course
The next class begins Oct. 2 at the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center, 12348 E. Montview Blvd.
