One More Reason to Eat Well this Holiday Season

Learning to cook is a fairly traditional Girl Scout activity, which is why the Cook Legacy Badges take girls from Snacks (Brownie) all the way through their first Dinner Party (Ambassador). Some might even call cooking from scratch, in a society with supermarket aisles full of pre-packaged meals, a lost skill. So what’s the benefit of cooking with your girls? There are quite a few!

Some of the benefits:

• It encourages girls to try healthy foods.
• Girls feel like they are accomplishing something.
• Learning to cook is a skill girls can use for the rest of their lives.
• Girls who learn to eat well may be more likely to eat healthfully as adults.
• Positive cooking experiences can help build self-confidence.
• Research shows that kids who cook with their parents may even be less likely to abuse drugs.

Want to check our sources? Check out this article on Web MD Why it’s so important to spend time in the kitchen with your children — and how you can get started for more information. Still need more convincing? Cooking also improves children’s creative thinking skills as they alter recipes and explore chemical reactions (What’s the Chemistry of Cooking?), it reinforces  important math concepts (Learning Math Through Cooking) in a hands-on way, and can be really fun. Plus you get to eat your creation at the end. And who wouldn’t love a science experiment that ends with food? Total win/win.

 

If you’re ready to pick up your spatula and start cooking with your girls, we’ve got some great recipe ideas for you. From breakfast all the way through dessert, there’s a recipe for every time of day and for every age level in The Girl Scout Recipe Collection. Most of the recipes are taken directly from either the Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting or from the Journeys so girls can connect their cooking directly to other program resources. We even have cooking-related program events coming up such as Know-Bake Brownies (Toledo), Cultural Cooking (Dayton), or Daisy Chef (Lima) to name just a few available on Ebiz. Now that you know the benefits, what are you waiting for? Make a difference and cook with some kids today!