With grocery prices up and time more precious than ever, healthy, affordable eating might seem out of reach these days, especially for people with lower incomes.
But the Portage Township trustee’s office says you can still eat well affordably at home and they’re launching a new free class to prove it.
Portage Township Trustee’s Office Program Coordinator Connor Piper says when he was growing up, he was turned off by advice to eat healthy because it always seemed so strict and rigid.
"So we want to tell people it's still OK to have that pizza at the end of the week, it's still OK to get that burger, but to also incorporate more vegetables that they might not regularly eat," Piper said. "To kind of get people thinking about that in that kind of context, instead of just, 'Oh, this is healthy eating, you need to be healthy.'"
The office will offer free weekly classes at sites around the community, hoping to make transportation easier. At each weekly class they’ll show how to cook a new meal. They’re accepting recipe ideas now on their Facebook page, recipes that eventually will go into an online community cookbook, and they’ll soon launch a new website for the program.
With the prep and cleanup time, Piper says eating well can seem daunting at first but it doesn’t have to be.
"It can just be overwhelming and so I think that our focus of the classes is to sort of create these meals that you can have with your family that are easy, affordable, that you can make with very little effort."
Piper will host a session Thursday at 6 p.m. at the Main Library downtown South Bend to get public input on the plans.
