Oral Health x Nutrition: Super Chefs Cookery for Kids at the Surrey Fusion Festival

I volunteered with Dr, Greg's SuperChefs Cookery for Kids program, which is a non-profit cooking program for kids that links food to oral and overall health (see link below). I had an opportunity to meet and work with Dr. Greg Chang (dentist and founder of the program) at the Surrey Fusion Festival in 2014. I helped manage the booth by teaching young children and their parents about oral self-care techniques in conjunction with healthy eating. This collaboration between dentistry and nutrition was an excellent opportunity for me to draw the links between oral health and dietetics.

This volunteer experience also allowed me to to support these children and their parents in developing their oral self-care technique and skills; namely regarding toothbrushing. It was initially difficult to get the children interested in coming to our booth to learn about brushing their teeth, so we started making balloon apples and laying out colourful toothbrushes on the tables and it really made a difference to how approachable we were. This made me realize how important it is to first be able create an environment that is conducive to effective learning; especially when dealing with energetic children. I also realized that when you teach toothbrushing on a dentoform, that it is a good idea to allow the child to hold the dentoform in the same position as their own teeth as opposed to facing it toward them (since that’s not reflective of how they would brush their teeth at home). I feel that this experience gave me a lot of ideas on how to better engage my clients in personal self-care sessions and how to better evaluate their skills and understanding.

Please visit the SuperChefs website: https://www.superchefs.org

Top: Me and two colleagues at the Surrey Fusion Festival. Left: Balloon apples we made to give to the children. Right: Me and my colleague working with a parent and child on toothbrushing technique.

#healthpromotion #oraldiseaseprevention #oralhealtheducation #collaboration