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The Lincolnshire Food & Health Project involves 2 strands.
We have Community Cooking and Community Growing.
Through the District Councils and also Public Health Lincolnshire
there are a whole range of cooking and growing opportunities
for people to get involved with in the communities.
We have a number of Community Growing sites across Lincolnshire
all led by volunteers and gardener supports
who support people that might not have grown fruit and vegetables before
to grow more in the gardens and at home as well.
To a degree you don't need to know anything about gardening at all.
In a way it's probably better that you don't because there's a lot of
perhaps information that maybe just overwhelms people
but the simple thing is just to get started
to start putting some seeds in the ground,
start composting,
start understanding how your food is grown and where it comes from.
What it's made of really and why it's good for you.
At a growing site people get involved with a range of activities
from weeding, making raised beds,
making scarecrows, the list is endless
and then there's obviously the planting and
harvesting the produce at the end.
Health benefits. Fresh air, exercise,
the connection to the earth. That one cannot be overstated,
and just actually having a focus
having something that grows and seeing that lifecycle go on and on.
Most of the areas are covered by Garden Organics
Master Gardener Programme, but where this isn't available
we do have alternatives so everybody can get involved.
I like the social aspect, meeting the people
and I love to be outside,
and just doing anything outside. I have a big garden at home
as well, so it's just something I'm really interested in.
In the Community Cooking side of it,
we have a variety of community cooking courses
running from about 3 to 10 weeks.
These involve cooking healthy simple recipes
such as stir-fry and soups
and also information about a healthy, balanced diet
food budgeting and also food hygiene.
We use fresh ingredients, traditional skills,
and we help them to produce dishes that are quite healthy for them.
For instance, we'll do reduced cream, reduced salt etc
incorporate things into dishes to make them healthier
and by doing so we hope it will help people
just to have a more balanced diet and the health benefits that go with it.
Most important thing I learned was that
I was overcooking my vegetables
and taking all of the goodness out of them.
Well before I started doing the cookery course,
I always bought ready-made meals.
But now I can honestly say that I don't buy any ready-made meals at all
I cook everything from scratch and it's a lot cheaper
and it tastes a lot better.
We encourage people to eat a healthy, balanced diet,
including plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.
It's hoped that simple, easy to maintain steps
to a healthy balanced diet, will in the long-term
lead to reductions in obesity, coronary heart disease,
and type-2 diabetes to name a few.
Definitely go. You're not going to lose anything,
you're gonna save money in the long-run
and you're gonna eat a lot healthier,
and it's nice to know you've actually prepared it yourself.
The sessions are absolutely free.
You'll meet people of a like-mind,
you'll probably make friends just at the first session
and you'll have food to take away with
You'll have lots of ideas, and to some degree you can actually mould
what we do on the course,
because if there's something you're particularly interested in,
we can always help you to do it.