On Jan. 31, 10-year-old New Orleans native Kaj Friis-Hechtwill appear on the Food Network’s Chopped Junior.
Friis-Hechtmade beef Wellington for his family on Christmas this year, while I was toasting my store bought rolls in the oven and subsequently burning them.
The network is home to other popular cooking shows like Chopped, Cupcake Wars and Iron Chef.
In an interview with The Advocate on Jan. 23, Friis-Hecht’s father, Michael Hecht, said his son fell in love with cooking when he discovered the Food Network.
“So, totally on his own, he started cooking and practicing his knife skills. We’d come down in the morning and find a large pile of chopped onions on the counter,” Hecht told The Advocate. He added that his son has been influenced by his mother’s Scandinavian heritage and an Indian-English mentor’s knowledge in the kitchen.
This is an amazing feat for anyone, not to mention a 10-year-old. This is an incredible skill he has and while he may be a natural, it takes some work to be good at something.
We encourage our youngsters to be proficient in things like sports, but often forget to encourage cooking, a skill essential to human life. We have to eat. So what do we do when we get busy? We eat fast food. Our kids can’t help with food because they don’t know how to cook either, so before you know it, you’re eating out for nearly every meal.
If you’re not eating out, you’re staying in and eating ramen. Teaching our children healthy habits in the kitchen is crucial because, as a nation, obesity is on the rise.
According to a study done in Aug. 2016 by StatisticBrain.com, childhood obesity has increased by 200 percent in 30 years. Further than that, 18 percent of children 2-19 are obese and 80 percent of obese children become obese adults.
The website kidshealth.org provides a lot of information on healthy eating, involving kids in the process can help to keep obesity in check.
Kids learn from seeing so we as adults and young-adults, who will eventually be parents, need to figure out how to have a healthy balance of meals and how to cook in the home.
I will briefly point out that gender is not a factor that goes into cooking in the home. as Friis-Hecht and his father have proved.Eating freshly made food is not gendered. Both men and women are accounted for in the obesity count.
Everyone can learn from this talented 10-year-old. I don’t mean that you should cook beef Wellington on Christmas, but I do mean we should begin to cook with fresh fruits, vegetables and meat. Reducing our reliance on overly processed convenience meals can create a healthier future for us and for our children in the years to come.
Myia Hambrick is a 21-year-old mass communication junior from Temple, Georgia.
