Summer can be the perfect time to learn how to eat right and how to use your kitchen to its full potential. YMCAs across Central Florida are hosting healthy eating classes in a Summer Food Fun tour taught by its Director of Healthy Eating, Chef Gary Appelsies.
Healthy eating "doesn't have to be boring or tasteless" and can be fun, says Appelsies.
With "good ingredients...you can really learn how to eat healthy by using food you already enjoy eating just making them in a different way," Appelsies says.
The tour showcases recipes like fish tacos and tomato salads as part of a healthy diet.
"We have people who have never been in the kitchen cooking before and they're learning how to cook," says Appelsies.
"We have people who just want to learn how to eat healthy and cook a little healthier. People who have never tried healthy cooking before," he says.
Dawn Viola is opening This Honest Food, a teaching kitchen in Clermont focused on holistic cooking and eating, to show others how food can taste great when made from scratch and how it can work as a medicine for your body.
Viola faced her own health issues and now works to help others facing health issues by "bridging that gap between the doctor giving the doctor's orders and showing them exactly how to make that happen in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming to them."
"They're coming in for classes to learn how to make the changes that their doctor has told them they have to make," Viola says.
"They'll be diagnosed or they'll go to the doctor and they'll tell them you need to stop eating this and start eating that and start exercising and doing this, but they are never told how to do it."
This Honest Food opens in Clermont on Thursday and the Summer Food Fun tour is open to the community to attend. You can find the schedule here.
Appelsies says children can start to learn how to eat healthy as well.
"It's really not a difficult task for kids, but if we can teach them at younger ages how to cook healthy and how to eat healthy they'll be healthier in the long run."