Nutrition at every age is critical for our health and well-being. The cycle of hunger shows that people often find themselves in the position of making difficult decisions when they are food insecure. This can be eating foods with low nutritional value, which can make them vulnerable to chronic health conditions.
Our Nutrition Education tools help provide insight and resources to encourage individual to make healthier choices for themselves. In turn, healthier individuals and healthier families reduce the need for healthcare in the future. In the end, Nutrition Education addresses the need to develop skills and knowledge about healthy eating, economical preparation, and the health benefits it brings.
Developed by Share Our Strength, Cooking Matters is a 6-week, hands-on, cooking-based program for all ages that teaches food preparation and food budgeting skills that people need to make lasting changes to their eating habits. Cooking Matters in the Store is a one-day program that teaches students how to identify healthy and less expensive options at their local grocery store.
Interested in taking a nutrition class you can find them on our events calendar.
We share resource where our partners and the people we work with can find nutritional information as well as recipes that are friendly to any budget.
Jannelle Zenner, a Nutrition Education Specialist for The Idaho Foodbank and in partnership with St. Mary’s Clearwater Valley Hospital & Clinics, Presents Share Our Strength Cooking Matters in Your Pantry. This video includes tips and tricks for healthy, budget-friendly ways to stock your pantry and how good nutrition can help reduce developing chronic disease.
The classes gave me hope. It changed how I eat and how I shop. Many of the lessons I learned are now habits.
Cooking Matters Graduate
The Cooking Matters is helping end childhood hunger by inspiring families to make affordable food choices. Our programs teach parents and caregivers with limited food budgets to shop for and cook healthy meals. Cooking Matters is a campaign of Share Our Strength, an organization working to end hunger and poverty.
Through these courses, Cooking Matters participants learn how to select nutritious and low-cost ingredients and prepare them in ways that provide the best nourishment possible for themselves and their families.
The Idaho Foodbank partners with volunteer culinary and nutrition experts to teach classes throughout Idaho. As the authorized Lead Partner in Idaho for Cooking Matters, The Idaho Foodbank provides nutrition education to all ages in communities throughout Idaho. We include courses for Adults, Kids, Teens and Families.
My favorite part of this class was trying new foods and being healthy.
Cooking Matters For Kids, Caldwell
The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, in May. This Budget Reconciliation bill makes significant changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)….
For the past 10 years, the fourth graders from Mrs. Downs’ class at Cornerstone Christian School have been doing something pretty amazing—they’ve been rolling up their sleeves and volunteering every…
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Rural Areas Continue to Have Higher Rates of Food Insecurity Meridian, ID – Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger-relief organization, has released its annual Map the Meal Gap report. In Idaho,…
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In fiscal year 2023, food for 23.8 million meals distributed statewide with 86% of all food being nutritious. Over 212,922 people served any given month from our facilities in Meridian, Pocatello, and Lewiston, and through our network of over 440 community distribution partners statewide.
