Let's Get Cooking wins prestigious health accolade

Let's Get Cooking clubs, backed by £20 million from the Big Lottery Fund, are a fun way to give children and their families the confidence to cook nutritious and tasty meals from scratch. By 2010, Let's Get Cooking, led by the School Food Trust, will have signed up 5,000 school-based cooking clubs, in a bid to teach new cooking skills to more than one million children, family and community members. RSPH has endorsed Let's Get Cooking by accrediting its two-day, demonstrator training course for full member clubs' adult leaders, of which there will be around 6,000 by 2011. Let's Get Cooking's deputy operations manager, Maggie Sims, MBE, who developed the demonstrator training, said: "It is a great achievement for our demonstrator training programme to be independently validated and to meet the RSPH's high standards." She adds: "This prestigious accreditation is a welcome acknowledgement of an important and highly valued element of Let's Get Cooking and will further enhance our club leaders' confidence." RSPH chief executive, Professor Richard Parish, said: "There's a crucial link between diet, lifestyle and health, with poor nutrition contributing to serious health problems including cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Let's Get Cooking encourages children in good eating habits which can last a lifetime. "Equally importantly, the children can then take the healthy eating message back to their families and the wider community. We congratulate Let's Get Cooking on gaining this RSPH accreditation as it shows the high standard of training and support the demonstrators receive to help them run the clubs safely and effectively. Well done!"