DENVER — This week, elementary school students in Denver are learning all about healthy cooking. However, the lesson isn't just about the foods they eat, but also cooking in the cleanest way for our environment.
Children as young as 6 years old are participating in the second chef showdown the first week of December, put on by the non-profit group Girls Inc. and the City of Denver’s Office of Climate Action. It’s the second competition where the kids are given a secret ingredient and then work to come up with the winning dish using all electric appliances. The first competition was with older students.
"It's a way for them to learn about food science in a way that's fun and engaging,” Amariah Jean-Baptiste, who helped come up with the idea, said. “But also a way for them to learn about teamwork, because they do have to partner with an adult in their lives.”
The competitors will cook using induction cooktops that use an electromagnetic coil to heat and cook much more efficiently.
It also doesn’t impact air quality inside.
“We actually can get more heat in the home cooking with induction than we can with even gas,” Chef Andrew Forlines, with the city, said. “So we're able to have high efficiency, directed, consistent, precise heating. It's also going to be highly efficient and carbon free.”
Forlines, who is helping with the competition, started off at the Broadmoor Hotel and worked in fine dining before moving into education.
He is now the city’s cooking electrification administrator in the climate action office.
“This technology is tested and trusted. It's been around for over 100 years, but it's just now starting to gain traction here in the states,” Forlines said. “Europe is much further ahead with the market share. And so we really just want to get everyone used to it, and also de-stigmatize the idea of electric cooking for home cooking, when people think of gas being the best.”
“I think it's really wonderful for them to be able to learn about the importance of induction burning, and just learn about sustainability and how they can create it in their own household and internally, rather than just outside of themselves,” Jean-Baptise added.
The hope is events like this convince more people to use induction cook tops. However, that costs money.
So the other part of the event is getting feedback from people about what rebates and incentives would be most helpful to switch to greener cooking appliances and then roll out that help next year.
You can give your feedback on the Building Electrification Rebates here.