Get Cooking

Get Cooking is a community based programme that aims to get communities cooking again by teaching meal planning skills and how to cook healthily on a budget – for themselves and their whanau.

Get Cooking was developed by Waikato Primary Health in 2007 in collaboration with dieticians, Maori and Pacific working groups.  The programme was peer reviewed for nutritional content, and following two successful pilots was launched in September 2007.

Two out of every five deaths each year (approximately 11,000) are due to nutrition-related risk factors such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity and inadequate vegetable and food intake.

Of these 11,000 deaths, almost 50 per cent are due to dietary factors alone.

Get Cooking aims to tackle this issue by not only providing the right information but giving people the skills, through practical workshops, to make life changing behaviours themselves.

Get Cooking is delivered over six hands-on workshops that introduce healthy eating, healthy shopping and healthy cooking habits in local communities using locally trained ‘Get Cooking leaders’. Each session is packed with fun activities and hands on cooking. Above all, participants can taste at the end how well, easy and within budget healthy food can be.

Waikato Primary Health has now made the Get Cooking manuals available for other organisations to use to support programmes within their own communities.

Get Cooking tutor manual
Get Cooking participant manual

For assistance in delivery the programme, any questions, comments or feedback, please email Waikato Primary Health on info@waikatopho.org.nz