Chef Cecilia de Castro, founder of the Academy of Culinary Education. Photo by Lee Choo.

The challenge was issued to children ages 5 to 18 attending summer camp at San Fernando, Branford and El Cariso parks—develop an appetizing, healthy dish using ingredients normally found in their pantries.

The winners of the park competitions will face off in a cooking contest on Saturday, July 27, at California State University, Northridge. In addition to a trophy, cash prize and free cooking classes with acclaimed chef Cecilia de Castro, founder of the Academy of Culinary Education in Woodland Hills, the winner of the cook-off will also take home bragging rights as one of the best young cooks in the San Fernando Valley.

“The idea behind the cook-off is to encourage children and their families to make healthier choices when they eat,” said nutrition professor Annette Besnillian, director of dietetic internships in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences in CSUN’s College of Health and Human Development. “What better way to teach that lesson than to have the kids involved in the decision-making and cooking process? They learn that creating and cooking healthy dishes can be fun and can taste good.”

The San Fernando Valley Healthy Kids Cook-Off 2013 is scheduled to take place from 10 a.m. to noon in Room 112 of Sequoia Hall, located near the center of the campus at 18111 Nordhoff St. in Northridge.

The competition is sponsored by the Valley Care Community Consortium (VCCC), a health and mental health planning collaborative that serves residents in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys. The consortium is made up of representatives from government and community agencies, including CSUN’s Institute for Community Health and Wellbeing and Marilyn Magaram Center for Food Science, Nutrition and Dietetics, who work together to improve the health and wellbeing of the area’s residents.

Besnillian said three of her undergraduate and graduate nutrition and dietetics students have spent the past several weeks working with VCCC, including community liaison ublic health nurses Shiarron Baker and JoAnna Levinson, who coordinated the cook-off, and the families at the three parks to teach the children about food safety and making healthy food choices.

Last month, the children were challenged at camp to come up with an attractive, tasty and healthy cold dish developed from items they would normally find in their kitchens at home. The first-, second-, third- and fourth-place winners of the park competitions will put their recipes to the test on July 27 when a panel of judges, which will include other children and de Castro, will determine who came up with the best dish.

“We find that children tend to make the right choices when it comes to nutrition, more often then not, if they have the knowledge or access to information,” Besnillian said. “What better way to give them those tools than through a cook-off?”

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