Real Food for Kids

In the kitchen, young chefs learn how to follow a recipe, prepare and cook ingredients and always leave the kitchen as clean as they found it!

The Real Food for Kids SNAP Ambassador Program trains community volunteers to conduct outreach in settings where SNAP-eligible residents may gather. Ambassadors provide information to residents, address misconceptions and misinformation, and guide residents to a variety of enrollment options.

Since 2012, the Real Food for Kids Culinary Challenge has provided students in the DMV with an authentic work-based learning experience mirroring the responsibilities of school nutrition professionals who are tasked with creating delicious, healthy school meals that represent the diverse culinary voices in our school communities within a set budget. It is the only professional culinary competition open to both middle and high school students, and the only competition where students have an opportunity to see their recipe adapted and served in school cafeterias as well as considered for adaptation by the restaurant industry.

For more than a decade, the Culinary Challenge has engaged and supported students taking Family and Consumer Sciences electives, including professional-level Culinary Arts and Hotel and Restaurant Management. The program is also open to students participating in culinary enrichment programs such as extra-curricular culinary programs focused on nutrition literacy and skills development. The Culinary Challenge fosters innovation in school meals, specifically advancing plant-based cuisine, and provides a co-curricular, project-based learning platform for instructors.

Fresh Food Explorers is a preschool nutrition education program designed for students from low-income households who are at greater risk for obesity, overweight and related health conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, as a result of diet. The goals of the program are to develop nutrition competencies in young learners through engaging curriculum that empowers them to increase their consumption of fresh vegetables at school and at home and build the life skills to make healthy food choices as they grow.