Colruyt : Lowest Prices gets children of 7,500 classes cooking and moving at school with Cooking Class

Children eat too little fruit and vegetables and get too little physical activity. These are just a few of the findings of the three-monthly review of primary and secondary schools' health policies, conducted by the non-profit organisation Vlaams Instituut Gezond Leven. As Colruyt attaches great importance to promoting a balanced diet and physical activity, the supermarket and a team of teachers, nutritionists and exercise experts have, for the 8th time in a row, put their heads together to formulate the educational programme Cooking Class.

Free online course package

Cooking Class is a cross-curricular online learning programme that informs teachers and children in kindergarten and primary school about the importance of a balanced diet and physical exercise. The programme offers educational material that is tailored to the needs of different age groups. The content of the course package is adapted to the official curriculum and is updated every year. The new food pyramid for instance has been integrated in the curriculum content for the academic year If you only need to prevent line-breaks on space characters, you can use entities between words: No line break instead of 2017-2018. Teachers can register their classes for cookingclass.be easily and free of charge.

Cooking and moving together in class

The website provides teachers with over 90 recipes which can easily be prepared in class and are organised by season. The site also offers ready-made themed lessons on balanced nutrition as well as original crafting ideas and 50 physical exercise videos.

Through this initiative, Colruyt offers different ways of promoting certain skills such as teamwork skills, planning skills, fine motor skills and discovering new flavours and cultures. Teacher Carine of the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwecollege in Ostend is enthusiastic: 'Cooking Class is brilliant: it allows children to do craft work and to cook of course, which is great! At the same time the exercises and lessons fit in perfectly with the primary school's objectives.'

The growing success is also reflected in the figures. From the academic year 2011-2012to 2017-2018the number of registered classes increased from 4,500 to 7,500. The participating classes come from 3,870 different schools, which means that of every registered school, almost 2 classes are actually using Cooking Class. The number of unique visitors of the website doubled over the same period, from 12,700 to 28,400. Last year the most popular recipe in the winter was star soup with meatballs, in the warmer months it was the fruit pizza.

'A balanced diet is important to Colruyt'

Cooking Class is consistent with many other initiatives taken by Colruyt to promote healthy nutrition. Marketing director Guy Elewaut: 'All our folder recipes come with a breakdown of nutritional values in terms of fat, carbohydrates, salt, ... Also, we encourage our customers to put fresh seasonal vegetables on the menu. As from 24 September we will also gradually introduce the Nutri-Score, the new food label, on the packaging of our products. In just a couple of weeks from now, we will also be using that label on colruyt.be and the MyColruyt app. This label helps customers see at a glance which products have a sound nutritional value and which have not.'

Colruyt: fruit supplier for schools

Another similar initiative is 'Oog voor Lekkers'. This programme set up by the Flemish Government allows schools to collect fruit, vegetables or milk every week. Students then eat a tasty, fresh piece of fruit or vegetable or drink a glass of milk together in the classroom, as a snack. Colruyt is one of the suppliers for Oog voor Lekkers.

More information?

Yana Morren, press officer Colruyt Lowest Prices
[e-mail]
02 363 55 45
0473 92 45 10

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