Neepawa Eats Healthy: Involving Students to Prepare Healthy and Affordable Foods

Neepawa Eats Healthy is a group of local organizations and community members who are working together to improve healthy eating outcomes in the community. The organization has been advocating for families to prepare healthy and affordable foods through their Meal in 30 Project. It’s a project where they feature a certain recipe every month and the featured recipe for April is Best Breakfast Burritos.  

On April 17, 2024, they were able to partner with the Neepawa Middle School and ArtsForward as the venue to have a Grade 7 class prepare the Best Breakfast Burritos recipe. This is a reward for these students who were helping run the Breakfast program in their school.

NACTV was able to interview Sherrill-Lee Hyra, Health Promotion Coordinator of the Prairie Mountain Health and part of the Neepawa Eats Healthy Committee and she mentioned this activity and its purpose. “Today at ArtsForward, they graciously donated their space today to host a Grade 7 classroom to have a celebration of food and they also had an opportunity to cook together which is a really important skill. Something that the Neepawa Eats Healthy Committee is encouraging families to do is to cook together at home. It definitely has a benefit to our health and wellness when we cook whole foods that were not always using prepared or fast food in our day to day lives. So we are encouraging cooking skills, getting involved in the kitchen, having some fun in the kitchen. Knowing that food preparation doesn’t have to take a lot of time. We can be creative in our approach and we certainly saw that with our kids here today.” said Hyra.

Hyra also mentioned at the end of the interview that the Neepawa Eats Healthy committee is looking for some more volunteers to help implement their various projects that aims to promote healthy eating in the community.