For the second year in a row, the RHS Culinary Magnet students were given the challenge: create a snack that a fourth-grader can make. The rules included: you can’t use a sharp knife, oven, stove or microwave. It’s got to be relatively low fat, low-sugar and high-fiber.
More precisely, it can contain, at most, seven grams of fat, two grams of saturated fat, fifteen grams of sugar, and it must include a fruit or a vegetable.
A chicken sandwich, for example, would not have met these requirements. Fortunately, sophomore Corbyn Looney had a solution.
“All the carbohydrates in the bread and the fat in the mayonnaise make a chicken salad sandwich high-fat,” Looney said, “So, for the bread I used two lettuce leaves, and for the mayo, sour cream. Hopefully this can show kids that having a healthy and a tasty meal is possible.”
The idea came from Medical City Hospital, believing that if healthy and tasty snacks were made by young adults for younger kids, the severity of child obesity would lessen.
“The culinary students are our future chefs of tomorrow and we need to educate them on ‘Understanding Food Labels’ and ‘How to calculate Recipes,'” Gulrukhsar Jiwani, the dietitian from Medical City working in this program said, “Furthermore, elementary kids really look up to high school kids and having them teach the small kids how to make healthier snacks has shown to work very well.”
“Child obesity exists in almost all schools” sophomore Sahand Ahrabi said, “So, a snack made of raisins, vegetables, cheese and white wheat, blends the different flavors into one tasty and healthy meal”.
Students created and prepared the recipes and submit them to their teacher, Karen Hill. Sixteen recipes were selected, and on February 12, a dietitian from Medical City made the final revisions before the recipes were published.
As the snacks were being prepared, the school photography department took photos of the preparation process and of the final product.
The recipes will then be distributed to every fourth- and fifth-grader in the Richardson school district.
“This is an age when kids can work more independently in the kitchen with some limitations.” Jiwani said, “When kids prepare their own snack (follow a recipe on their own), they are more likely to eat that snack than an adult telling him/her, ‘here eat this please.’ ”
As for the young chefs, this project-based-learning has been a unique experience as cooks and students.
“This is a great opportunity for high school students to create recipes with nutritional guidelines that a child could prepare,” Hill said,“It opens eyes to the child obesity epidemic by highlighting how much fat is in each snack. As a result, you become smarter regarding what you eat.”
