Cooking up Change®, Greater Orange County
2024 marks the 11th anniversary of Kid Healthy’s Greater Orange County, Cooking up Change® program and event. Join us, on Thursday, March 14, 2024, in an event like no other. Watch the excitement unfold as students demonstrate their vision for school food.
Tickets can be purchased at the link on the bottom of this page.
Since 2012, Orange County students are taking a vested interest in making school lunch better……We Should Listen!
Cooking up Change® is a program that challenges high school students to create healthy, great tasting meals that meet the real life requirements of the national school meal program. It serves up life changing opportunities for students to transform the school lunch menu, as well as engage in culinary, nutrition, and food science career pathways.
In collaboration with local high school culinary instructors, chef mentors and the greater community students gain knowledge in careers as a chef or in the field of nutrition sciences. Each student team is challenged to create a new lunch menu following the high standards school food service professionals face everyday, including: utilizing only ingredients commonly found in a school cafeteria, a limited budget of $3.00 per serving, all while making it creative, great tasting and nutritious.
Each team presents their meal to an esteemed panel of judges and are rated on originality, taste, appearance and presentation, The winning teams receive prizes, scholarships, culinary experiences and are given the opportunity to speak one on one with their Congressional and Senate Representatives, regional and state advocacy groups to share their views & advocate for healthier, tastier school lunches.
This event is part of Healthy Schools Campaign’s National Cooking up Change® Series.
- Education in nutrition, meal-planning, meal budgeting, food resourcing, USDA dietary guidelines, and public speaking
- Hands on training with a professional chef mentor
- Participation in a regional cooking contest and state wide advocacy
- Opportunity to receive scholarships for higher education
- Opportunity to gain internships with local restaurant and food service professionals
View the video highlights from the 2019 event found here:
Kid Healthy’s programs intentionally reach youth in low-income communities of greater Orange County and in schools with a disproportionately high percentage of students eligible for the federal free and reduced meal program, a reliable indicator of poverty. For more information, please contact as at: 657-837-5715 or [email protected] Cooking up Change, Greater Orange County Event Date: Thursday, March 14, 2024 Purchase Your Tickets Now:
Programming is provided by the generosity of our community of funders and individual donations. Click the “Donate” button below to make a general donation: