Health and Fitness: Serving up a home-cooked future for children

Apr 22 2010 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Serving up a home-cooked future for children

The government predicts that within 25 years half the UK population will be obese and NHS resources will struggle to cope. Last week staff at Alder Hey in Merseyside, the country’s largest children’s hospital, , said they are already spending too much time and money treating preventable diseases such as obesity. Hilarie Stelfox reports on a small community project in the Colne Valley hoping to help today’s children enjoy a healthier future

JAMIE OLIVER got it wrong. So says grandmother Polly Whitehead who is one of the brains behind a Slaithwaite-based community project teaching children to cook.

Cook-a-doodle-do! is a non profit-making holiday cookery club for eight to 13-year-olds. Polly, a former professional baker, is its chairman.

She said: “Jamie Oliver went into secondary schools to try and change eating habits, but he should have gone into primary schools where the children are still impressionable and will take on board what they’re being told about healthy eating.’’

Polly runs the project with six other women who are all mothers, grandmothers and teachers.

They want to introduce a new generation to the pleasures of creating wholesome food from wholesome ingredients – to steer children away from the quick-fix, unhealthy processed foods many are brought up on.

“The children we work with are from that key age when we can make a difference,” said Polly.

Although Cook-a-doodle-do! is still small in scale, Polly and her team have hopes that one day it will become a full-time cookery school for children and play a part in mainstream education.

“At the moment we only run sessions during school holidays,’’ she said. “We have up to 70 children on our books and we’d like to do more, but we desperately need more helpers.”

Polly, 66, lives in Slaithwaite and is a well-known figure in Huddersfield’s culinary community.

She trained in bakery and confectionery at Leeds Technical College, where she met her husband, John.

They worked as bakers and, more latterly, kept a small hotel in Marsh. Polly was famed for her preserves and pickles which she sold seasonally.

But her retirement gave her the time to start thinking about a new role – teaching children to cook.

“I wanted to give something back,” she said. “I have baked all my life and I love it. I wanted to pass some of this passion on to children.”

The idea came to her when she ran a pensioners’ luncheon club with two friends at a church in Outlane.

“I used to joke that I wanted a red bus to drive around in, teaching cookery to children,’’ said Polly. “One friend said she’d drive and the other would be the washer-up.”

When the luncheon club disbanded, Polly and her friends, Jo Norman and Joan Wood set about making her dream a reality. They held their first meeting in January 2008 and the first class five months later.

Today Cook-a-doodle-do! has a committee of seven. Polly is assisted by Joan and her daughter Catherine Rawson, Margaret Cook, Phil Beevers, Annis Mansaf and Beryl Richardson.

In order to work with children the women have had to have CRB checks, take out insurance, go on first aid courses and conduct risk assessments. “There has been a lot of paperwork,” says Polly.

Grants from a number of sources, including Kirklees Council, the Community Spirit shop in Slaithwaite, Colne Valley Lions, Freemasons and the Common Good Trust have enabled the women to buy equipment, pay for courses, insurance and rent. They use Slaithwaite Community Centre for their courses.