By sharing what you love with others, you spread the seeds of joy. Joy can come in many forms, including food. Cooking with others can teach valuable life skills, such as time management, creativity, and effective communication.
The joy of cooking is more than a basic life skill: Cooking creates meaningful bonds, connects us to our ethnic traditions, and fosters a sense of community and common purpose. Yet the art of preparing food and enjoying family dinners can sometimes feel like a relic of a bygone era.
That's why this week Joybeat, We celebrate nonprofits Chop Chop FamilyThe organization encourages families to cook complete, healthy meals together, showing the world that you're never too young or too old to cook.
Sally Sampson, founder and president of Chop Chop Family, GBH Taking everything into consideration Host Arun Rath talks about his lifelong love of cooking and the joy of sharing it with his community. Below is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: ChopChop Family has grown quite a bit since its inception – going back to 2010, how did you get started and how did you get to where you are today?
Sally Sampson: I specialize in cookbook writing and I became really interested in the obesity epidemic and thought, could it really have a positive impact if kids learned how to cook and took responsibility for how they fed and took care of themselves?
We started by distributing it in pediatrician offices. Back in 2010, pediatricians were required to talk about healthy eating and exercise, but they didn't really have the tools. So when we started, it was just pediatrician offices.
Today we are in pediatric clinics, schools, after school etc. [programs]Hospitals, community health centers, anywhere there are children.
Courtesy of Sally Sampson
Russ: I think I first came across ChopChop Family at a pediatrician's office. How has the organization grown since then? Was it just you when you started?
Sampson: Actually, I think it was pretty much just me. I had an editor and a designer, but none of us were getting paid. We just did it because it was a real passion project.
We have about 15 employees now, and we pay them all a salary. We now have a business side, we have designers and so on. So we're growing both internally and externally.
Russ: You've talked about getting kids interested in cooking at an early age. Was cooking a big part of your childhood?
Sampson: That was big. I've always loved cooking. My mom cooked. To be honest, she cooked through “The Joy of Cooking” and she was a big Julia Child fan. She cooked through all those books.
I grew up in a certain era. [when] I ate what my parents gave me, what they cooked, what was on the table. I grew up with a pretty broad palate and I ate everything, and then I really developed a love for cooking.
Russ: How does that affect how you communicate this to others now?
Sampson: Well, I would say we look at everything through the lens of food and cooking. For example, we have classic recipes in the magazine, but we also have articles on math, science, financial literacy, cultural literacy and geography.
For example, if you have a child who is very interested in geography but not interested in cooking, when you start talking to them about where certain ingredients come from, they become more interested in the ingredients and what you can do with them. We feel that you can teach them almost anything through cooking.
Russ: You were talking about your mom and that generation of people who were obsessed with “The Joy of Cooking,” and I was really struck by how that may have been a reaction to Americans eating so much processed food. Did you have a sense that you were reaching an untapped audience in this country that was, if you'll pardon the pun, craving this kind of approach to food?
Sampson: Yeah, I think so. I really think so. I mean, so much of the food that people eat is processed or cooked by somebody else. I think the health outcomes are pretty dire as a result. If you think about all the issues that you have with your body, from diabetes to depression to lupus to migraines, it's all about cutting junk food out of your diet and cooking.
Russ: Going back to the evolution of the publication, when did you think this would be a good place to also talk about things like financial literacy and cultural literacy?
Sampson: Well, cultural literacy is something that comes naturally, right? When you talk about food from another country, it's a delicious food, you talk about where it comes from, its history, you're naturally introducing it.
Financial literacy is probably my obsession. I mean, this is a whole other story, but I feel like people aren't financially literate. And it's not just kids. You see it a lot with the pandemic, people not saving money, they don't understand how to shop, all that kind of stuff. I think this is really important.
So we decided to bring that to ChopChop. It's like, “Kana and Arun are going to the grocery store. We give them $10. They need to buy these things.” So it's like a standard math problem to get kids to think, “Is it better to buy big things that don't cost money or small things that you actually use up?” It depends. How much does it actually cost to make a meal?
As you know, fast food is often thought of as cheap. It's not. If you try to recreate a fast food dish using the real thing, you'll find that it's not that different. And in some cases, it might even be cheaper to make it yourself.
Russ: You're now sharing the joy of cooking with so many people. I think you've probably trademarked that phrase for the book. Can you just use that phrase and talk about what that joy means to you?
Sampson: I personally love cooking, it's great, I find it very satisfying and I see that in kids too. For example, when I did a photoshoot last weekend, I brought in regular kids, not models, and had them cook different dishes that will be featured in the next issue.
Some of the children have cooked before, others have not, but they go through the whole process from start to finish, preparing the ingredients and making a meal that the whole family can eat together. [the meal] To relatives and neighbors who are sick or cannot go out for some reason.
You can see that the kids are really excited. [if] When your child comes home from art class and wants to put a picture on the fridge, they're sharing it with you and with everyone else. The same thing can be said with food.
There is also an online cooking club, where you have to complete 13 different recipes and you get a stick every time you complete them. I think the first level is making a smoothie. You make a smoothie and then to get to the next level you have to send us a picture of the smoothie you made or of you making it.
They shine in every photo of these kids because it's an adult skill and such a thrill to master.
