making healthy choices at the grocery store is always a challenge but share
our strengths Cooking Matters program is helping families make better choices
every day
alisson ferreira is the national volunteer program manager for cooking
matters she knows how hard it can be for families to shop smart we've done a
research study that shows about eighty-five percent of low-income
families really want to put healthy meals on the table but only about 50%
are actually doing so and that's where Cooking Matters comes in Cooking Matters
brings families into either a grocery store or a location where they can take
cooking classes and they're able to learn hands-on skills that help them to
shop for and prepare healthy meals on a limited budget we're gonna be doing the
cooking matters of the store program so welcome people expect when they when
they come here first of all we talk about the various ways that you can
procure produce whether it's fresh frozen or canned and how to comparison
shop when it comes to those produce items and find the best value for your
money so we want to see whole wheat instead of enriched we also talk about
whole grains and finding whole grains on nutrition facts panel and we talked
about how to shop the store how to look for where healthy ingredients might
exist how to understand the layout of a grocery store and we talked about ways
that you can use those ingredients when you get home well thank you for sharing
your fresh ideas talvik is one of those people leading those tours of the
grocery store what are the biggest obstacles and hurdles that low-income
family faces when trying to shop for healthy foods so some of the biggest
obstacles is selection they live in areas that have less of a selection when
it comes to fresh produce and options to eat healthy food how are you assisting
these families in overcoming these obstacles with with healthy food options
so we teach them something called the unit pricing so we look at even though
the can is a larger item even though it has a higher price you're actually
getting a better value look at the smaller box versus the better back
tanita Johnson took a tour with Tao and learn just that I go to the grocery
store out there but I never really understood the fact of unify spin
on how to get the most out of my money and some time buying larger cans of
vegetables or fruit I can do more with so I can prepare it all at one time but
you look for different moves so do you feel like you were shopping in the wrong
way before yes but it's not just unit pricing that makes a difference in the
lives of these families you can identify this item has higher amounts of sodium
it has protein and we also teach them that even though it's one can it may not
be an entire serving you can prevent the sodium so much sodium and sugars in your
food you can control yourself Jasmine price is diabetic and sees the
epidemic all around her nowadays it's a lot of people getting diabetes I see a
lot of people with a lot of juice chips cupcakes and some things like that so
they actually these are cookers that are going to the restaurants or been the
fast products and stores they actually need to cook and tell has seen that
change happen thanks to cooking Medus one of our clients shared with us that
she had never even looked at a label before she was always pretty intimidated
because there was a large chart and a bunch of numbers that she didn't
understand so she actually was like I started reading labels and guess what my
husband's blood pressure went down was important to have programs like this in
the community in Chicago it's important because you want to live longer you want
to live longer you want to be healthier but when you know better you do better
for more information visit Cooking Matters