Local Students Cooking Up Edible Arts & Crafts
NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - The Kids Teaching Kids program in North Texas schools is helping elementary and high school students understand the importance of being healthy.
In fact, some students are turning healthy snacks into edible arts & crafts.
The high school juniors and seniors are helping in the fight against obesity while studying to be future chefs. They're charged with creating healthy, kid friendly snacks.
Nicole Frink made lettuce wraps. "It was kind of hard to find something that was good and healthy at the same time," she said.
All of the kids are students in the Texas ProStart program, the Texas Restaurant Associations' culinary high school initiative.
For weeks the students have been planning and testing unique healthy recipes.
Why not try some magic muffin madness? All you need is an English muffin. "It's sort of like a mini pizza and you put bruschetta topping on it," explained senior Osama Abubaker. "It's like the tomato sauce and you put tomatoes spinach and feta cheese. That's it really...healthy and simple."
Another healthy option – a fruit kabob; consisting of strawberries, bananas, grapes, apples and a dipping sauce.
Student's work with Medical City Dallas Hospital heart registered dietitians and Texas Chef Association chef mentors to make sure their snacks fit nutritional guidelines.
"Teach our future chefs of tomorrow, when they are creating recipes, [to] think about what they are creating but also educate them on serving sizes and nutritional facts," said Ryan Eason with Medical City.
The students are making a cookbook filled with their healthy snack recipes. Fourth and 5th graders in North Texas will free copies of the book.
Want-to-be chefs aren't the only ones getting firsthand experience. Photography students take pictures of the snacks and the journalism students do all the layout and design of the cookbooks. Area companies pay for the total production of the books.
