College and university students sometimes spend up to $4416 on fast food in a 12 month period. This is a lot. Considering college students are oftentimes strapped for cash and don’t know how to cook, this is an issue. Not to mention, college students often experience the infamous freshman 15, weight that many college students put on when they start school, to boot.
Brenda Ryan is a Londoner that founded an adaptive cooking program for the disabled. She teaches people how to cook for themselves and gives them the power of feeling that they’re independent when it comes to their food.
“So we don’t prepare filet mignon or steaks in our cooking classes. You know, we do things with them healthy options, but we show them their multitude of ways. Shawarma is a very popular, so you know, we’ll teach them how to do shawarma, teach them how to make enchiladas, and things that they never dreamt they could do. But they do them successfully. And we have them with hands on in the class making this sort of thing and they they are so proud of themselves when they do it.”
Ryan is also a
Brenda Ryan, founder of the adaptive cooking program
proponent of the economic benefits of cooking for yourself. She says that home cooking is oftentimes cheaper, and necessary for tight budgets.
“That’s one of the things that we promote initially, is that individuals that live on lifetime government, pensions and disability survive on an amount of money that’s well below the poverty line. So we teach them how to eat healthy at that level of income.”
Louise Vancer is a dietician in London. She centres her career around knowledge of healthy and sustainable eating habits, and strongly supports home cooking.
” There’s lots of benefits. As far as health goes, you have lots of good nutrition, you can control what you’re eating as far as things like sodium, the fat content of foods, there’s lots of great benefit in the different variety of foods may be a little more limited if you’re eating out to what the restaurant is supplying. And it depends as well if you’re looking at fast food versus home cooked restaurants, you might get more health benefits by having a meal that would allow you a little more variety.”
According to Global News, a Dalhousie University survey found nearly 42 per cent of Canadians are either buying ready-to-eat meals or eating at a restaurant once or twice a week, while another 3 per cent admitted to doing so on a daily basis.
