Hi there! My name is Chelsea and I am a Sodexo Dietetic Intern from a small town right outside of NYC. I am currently in my Wellness concentration and I couldn’t be more excited. When I hear the word wellness, a huge smile always pops up on my face. I feel that our own wellness is something that we tend to ignore these days. So what does wellness mean to me? The word wellness, to me, means overall balance in all aspects of life. Everything from food, to sleep, to physical activity should all be in balance. I feel like there are so many easy ways we can incorporate wellness into our lives, but unfortunately we choose not to sometimes. One thing that I love to do is to teach children about health and wellness. If we can teach children from a young age about balance, and overall health, they can grow up using these tools to promote wellness throughout the rest of their lives.
I had to amazing opportunity to work with The Creative Kitchen to help host their annual Kid’s Food Fest. This festival is a 2 day event in Manhattan that focuses on educating families on how to make healthy and balanced meal choices. They had all different kinds of vendors that promoted health and wellness and they even had live cooking demos with famous and extremely talented chefs. The main goal of the Kids Food Fest is to educate these families on how to make colorful, tasty and healthy meals at home.
This year I was placed in the kitchen helping world-renowned chefs do cooking demos and answer questions for children and their families. As I was walking from table to table, I kept overhearing the parents saying, “I wish I could just get my child to eat food like this”. I decided to try to get the children very excited to create healthy, children-approved recipes with their families at home just like the ones we were making at the cooking demo. I began by asking the children what their favorite fruit or vegetable was. Then I went to the kitchen and brought out some cut up fruit that we had on hand and showed them how to make smiley faces, shapes and even fruit kebabs. The children seemed very enthusiastic about my ideas to make these things and to decorate their plate with peas or strawberries to add more pops of color. I was able to communicate to the children and parents on how they could incorporate these ideas into their daily lives and provide them ideas on how to get their children to enjoy fruits and vegetables more. It was really great to hear that the parents wanted use my ideas at home.
I learned that wellness is something that we can pass along form person to person without even realizing it. I was able to pass my wellness knowledge on to these families and I had a blast doing it!
I had to amazing opportunity to work with The Creative Kitchen to help host their annual Kid’s Food Fest. This festival is a 2 day event in Manhattan that focuses on educating families on how to make healthy and balanced meal choices. They had all different kinds of vendors that promoted health and wellness and they even had live cooking demos with famous and extremely talented chefs. The main goal of the Kids Food Fest is to educate these families on how to make colorful, tasty and healthy meals at home.
This year I was placed in the kitchen helping world-renowned chefs do cooking demos and answer questions for children and their families. As I was walking from table to table, I kept overhearing the parents saying, “I wish I could just get my child to eat food like this”. I decided to try to get the children very excited to create healthy, children-approved recipes with their families at home just like the ones we were making at the cooking demo. I began by asking the children what their favorite fruit or vegetable was. Then I went to the kitchen and brought out some cut up fruit that we had on hand and showed them how to make smiley faces, shapes and even fruit kebabs. The children seemed very enthusiastic about my ideas to make these things and to decorate their plate with peas or strawberries to add more pops of color. I was able to communicate to the children and parents on how they could incorporate these ideas into their daily lives and provide them ideas on how to get their children to enjoy fruits and vegetables more. It was really great to hear that the parents wanted use my ideas at home.
I learned that wellness is something that we can pass along form person to person without even realizing it. I was able to pass my wellness knowledge on to these families and I had a blast doing it!
