Cook it! Fun, fast food for less: community nutrition education programme

Cook it! is a nutrition programme that has been developed for use in local communities in Northern Ireland. It can be used with a wide range of groups including young/single parents, young people leaving residential care, offenders during rehabilitation programmes, older people in sheltered accommodation and now people from certain black and minority ethnic (BME) groups.  

The programme offers hands-on, practical experience of cooking and preparing food, as well as improving knowledge of healthy eating and food safety.

In the latest 2016 manual for tutors the nutrition information has been updated to reflect new guidelines. A new taster session has been added to allow participants to experience a general nutrition session before committing to the full six-week programme. A new 100-page section has been developed to allow tutors to tailor the programme to some of the larger BME groups in Northern Ireland. This section has been piloted with local communities and includes recipes from Northern Ireland, recipes from each of seven selected BME groups and resource sheets that have been translated into seven languages.

The new BME section will allow locally-based Cook it! teams and tutors to respond to the needs of BME groups within their areas. This will help increase social interaction within and between ethnic groups, and help reduce isolation, promote integration and improve health and wellbeing.

This manual is only available through the Cook it! programme. For information on enrolling in a local programme or on training as a Cook it! tutor, contact the community dietitians in your local Health and Social Care Trust.