“The students in the combined grades 4, 5 and 6 cooking class at Ste Odile may not know it, but they’re part of a grand experiment. They’re participating in a pilot project, Les ateliers cinq épices, that sends dietitians to eight Montreal elementary schools. Their job: to teach kids how to cook foods that are lower in salt, fat and sugar than the highly processed snacks they’re used to eating. Just as important is making sure that, as these youngsters bake yummy cookies and cut fruits and veggies into weird shapes, they enjoy their break from the regular classroom routine. As program director Manon Paquette puts it, “We’re hoping to make healthy eating fun.” The kids are, in effect, learning nutrition through stealth. And there’s new evidence that they may even be rewiring their brains in the process.
Thanks to advances in neural imaging techniques, we can see the brain at work in a way that was not possible even a decade ago. And in light of mounting concerns about the increasing prevalence of obesity, this is good news“.
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