More than 100 kitchen managers from Fairfax County and Loudoun County Public Schools attended the Real Food for Kids Chefs’ Academy last week at Willowsford in Ashburn. The academy was funded by a $30,000 grant from the Life Time Foundation.
The foundation was created by Life Time Fitness and is dedicated to helping schools eliminate harmful ingredient from the food they serve, including trans fats and artificial additives. The week-long program was designed to help the kitchen staffs learn how to use more fresh-from-the-farm ingredients in school food and reduce the amount of processed foods served and included hands-on sessions to create salad dressings, spice blends and soups as well as training in knife skills and writing recipes.
“With the generous funding from Life Time Foundation, we can offer Chef’s Academy to more school cafeteria staff, touch more student’s lives and support the efforts of public school Food and Nutrition Service directors in Fairfax and Loudoun counties,” says Jenny Hein, president of Real Food for Kids, an organization that works to improve school food and students’ health. For more information, visit realfoodforkids.org.
