Use Food As Fuel Like A Fresh Flashlight Battery

I’ve got some guests in my cooking lab today. Local High School students are visiting the culinary college to learn more about fresh, wholesome ingredients. My approach will be “Food As Fuel” and why eating the best ingredients always give you the best performance and results.

These students were chosen because many of them live in a “food desert”. There are many areas in the city without grocery stores. There are neighborhoods were it is difficult to find fresh food or there’s a lack of transportation to go and get fresh food.

This is a serious issue because today’s teenagers are trying to grow their bodies and brains without some of the high protein foods necessary to do this. Most of these High Schoolers subsist on fast food, salt, fat, and engineered ingredients.

I’ve got quite a challenge in front of me. It will be difficult to convince someone why they should try to change their habits. It’s especially hard to tell a teenager what to do! However, my approach is trying to make the topic of Food As Fuel important to them.

I’m sure I could lecture about vitamins, minerals and the health benefits of eating fresh food, but my audience would probably fall asleep. They don’t care about numbers. What do they care about? They care about how they FEEL on a daily basis.

“Putting good fuel in your body is like using the best batteries in a flashlight”, I tell them. With two flashlights, one is loaded with big, but cheap batteries. The second flashlight gets smaller and more expensive batteries. Is it always better to get bigger portions for cheaper? We’ll see which flashlight burns longest.

When you eat better food, you have more energy. More energy means you can concentrate more. More concentration equals better results. So, better food equals better results. You can’t be excellent if you’re always tired.

With this “Food As Fuel” mentality in mind, I’m going to recreate one of the most ubiquitous foods they encounter, the Chicken McNugget. In the next video, I’ll show them how to make a better, tastier, healthier piece of chicken that is fun and easy to create.