BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Since 1985, Living Classrooms has been striving to make the community safer, stronger and healthier.
Now, Baltimore-based nutrition and weight-loss company Medifast is partnering with Living Classrooms to give local kids a hands-on healthy cooking experience.
“We feel like it’s important for healthy habits to be available for everyone, and we can do that by providing nutrition curriculum, providing the education and access,” said Jennifer Christman, director of clinical nutrition at Medifast.
The kids at the Living Classrooms’ Baltimore Urban Gardening with Students program learn a healthy version of some of their favorite foods, including pizza on a cauliflower crust.
“They are getting the opportunity to eat food that they may not usually always eat,” said BUGS program director Algernon Campbell.
“I think it’s good to learn these healthy habits because everybody needs nutrition in their body, without nutrition you can’t have energy and you can’t be healthy.”
But the partnership goes beyond healthy eating habits, bikes and helmets were donated, the waterfront patio and play space were renovated and a new basketball court was built.
“So they can have a safe, fun, beautiful place to practice healthy motion. They can do yoga, dancing, play basketball, to really get that healthy activity in,” Christman said.
It’s meant to create a healthy lifestyle that expands beyond the students.
“Sometimes I go home and I tell my mom, and then I tell the rest of my family, and then sometimes I go to school and I tell my friends about it and they go home and tell their parents and it just spreads on,” said student Tylin Norton.
