Let’s Get Cooking is the UK's largest network of healthy cooking clubs for children and their families.

When children eat better, they do better. The aim of Let's Get Cooking is to inspire children to learn to cook and enjoy good food, give them the confidence and skills to get hands-on in the kitchen and make healthier food choices throughout their lives.

Our clubs were, have been and are run by a network of thousands of volunteer club leaders and helpers. We support all of these Let’s Get Cooking champions by offering recipes, advice, expert training and practical resources.

And by sharing our expertise with many other organisations across the country including The Tesco Eat Happy Project, Iceland Foods Charitable Foundation, WRAP,Veolia, London Community Fund and various primary care trusts, we have supported the delivery of cooking activities to help even more young people and adults to get cooking.

Are you:

  • based in a school and wondering how the Government’s School Food Plan affects you, your pupils and your catering service?
  • a childcare provider who needs more information about the Voluntary Food and Drinks Guidelines for Early Years Settings in England, and how to provide a healthy diet for under fives?
  • a caterer or school cook, keen to get more pupils eating school meals and improve the profitability of your business?
  • working in a local authority or public health role, to keep up to date on topical children’s food issues?

Then Let's Get Cooking online courses could be right for your training.

What is it?

There are 4 online training courses in the Let’s Get Cooking Learning Network covering the following topics:

  • Providing a Healthy Diet for Young Children
  • Introducing a Healthy Packed Lunch Policy for Young Children
  • Encouraging Young Children in Your Care to Eat Well
  • Reducing Kitchen and Dining Waste

All training is completed online, so there’s no need to travel and modules can be completed at your own pace.

How much is it?

Prices range from £108 for an individual membership down to £32 for purchases of 100 or more.

Course bundles are available upon request, please contact letsgetcooking@bda.uk.com for further details.

Reducing Kitchen and Dining Waste

This course has been designed to help you reduce waste in your kitchen and dining room. It will help your catering service to become more efficient and environmentally friendly. It draws on our experience of working with schools to help them run an effective and economic school meal service.

The course is relevant to schools and early years settings that are involved with local authority catering contracts, local catering suppliers or those who run an in house service, employing the school cook and catering staff directly.

Through step-by-step information, this course aims to help you understand:

  • where waste can occur

  • why reducing waste is so important
  • why involving the whole school in reducing waste is so important
  • tools and techniques for reducing the level of waste within school food.

Meeting the Food and Drink Guidelines for Early Years

This course aims to help you:

  • understand the Voluntary Food and Drink Guidelines for Early Years Settings in England
  • be able to use the Guidelines and practical tools to plan menus for healthy and nutritionally balanced meals and snacks for children aged one to five.
  • understand the importance of hydration for children and the types of drinks to provide across the day
  • understand appropriate portion sizes for children aged one to five to meet their nutrition needs
  • understand how to check menus against the food and drink guidelines
  • know where to look for further information.

Encouraging Young Children in your Care to Eat Well

Through step-by-step information, this course aims to help you:

  • understand why it is important to adopt a ‘whole setting’ approach to healthy eating
  • be aware of the seven principles that outline national best practice (as outlined in the Children’s Food Trust’s Early Years Code of Practice for Food and Drink) to ensure their approach to food provision encourages children to eat well
  • become familiar with tried and tested methods used to adopt a ‘whole setting’ approach to food and drink
  • understand how to demonstrate that your setting has an approach to food and drink provision that meets national best practice.

This course is based on the information in sections 5 and 6 of the Voluntary Food and Drink Guidelines for Early Years Settings. The Guidelines have been developed using funding from Government to support early years settings to have a high quality approach to food and drink provision


Providing a Healthy Diet for Young Children

This course offers step-by-step information and activities to help you:

  • understand why a healthy diet is important for children aged one to five years
  • develop an understanding of what a healthy diet for children aged one to five years looks like
  • identify food and drinks to limit or avoid for children aged one to five years for nutrition or food safety reasons
  • understand the differences between young children’s diets and those for older children and adults
  • understand where to find up-to-date, evidence-based nutrition information for feeding babies aged under one, and children aged one to five years.