Prue Leith Quotes

I think the most important thing we can teach our kids for their long-term health and happiness is how to cook.

Children aren't being taught to cook or encouraged to try things or told why food is important.

One reason that we eat processed foods is the decline of home economics. Restarting home economics classes is one of the key things we could do to get this issue moving.

I think it's important to educate kids about food and let them help a little with the cooking and cleaning. That interaction is really important.

Most of my education has been around food.

Home economics - kids in school used to be taught how to shop, how to cook from scratch, how to be in control of their diets. Doesn't happen anymore.

When you don't know how to cook, you just say, 'I need something quick,' and then you fry something up. Now that I cook, I think, 'Do I want to have fried fish, baked fish, or grilled fish?'

If people are made to feel uncomfortable in the kitchen, they won't go in there. That's why I think children learning to cook can be such a wonderful thing.

All schools should teach children basic cooking skills. Every school should be able to buy sustainable, good quality food wherever possible from local sources. Every school should include food-growing in the curriculum. For some, that will mean twinning with willing farms. For others, it will mean literally building their own small farms.

Every cook has to learn how to govern the state.

We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture.

It's really great to get your kids involved in the kitchen. Not only will they have an appreciation for food, but their palates will expand.

Getting kids into the kitchen preparing the food they and their families will eat results in them viewing food in an entirely new way. If given the right ingredients, that act alone can raise the standards of the quality of the food both they and their family eat.

It's tough to eat well if you don't know how to cook.

As a student of Alice Waters, the patron saint of salad, I'm no stranger to the art of lettuce washing.

I would like to help people cook more.

I could not be more thrilled to be writing about the recipes I love and think are essential to any novice home cook, professional, and somewhere in between.

The way to get to like good food is by learning to cook, which is why I'm for ever banging on about children learning to cook.

I am not saying celebrity chefs don't encourage children to cook. However, their programmes are so entertaining, you end up stuffing your face with Pot Noodles instead of learning from them.

Every kid in every school no matter their background, deserves to learn the basics about food - where it comes from, how to cook it and how it affects their bodies. These life skills are as important as reading and writing, but they've been lost over the past few generations. We need to bring them back and bring up our kids to be streetwise about food.

One reason we planted the White House vegetable garden was to set an example about what food can mean, but to also begin a broader conversation about how we're feeding our kids, what they know about the food that they eat, how they're taking care of themselves.

If kids grow kale, kids eat kale. If they grow tomatoes, they eat tomatoes. But when none of this is presented to them, if they're not shown how food affects the mind and the body, they blindly eat whatever you put in front of them.

When I first started cooking, I was very much an intuitive cook when it came to taste, but that didn't mean I didn't want to know why some things worked and why others did not. My interest took me to culinary school.

I believe that 'MasterChef' brings something more to the table, so to speak, than simply being another reality food TV show. My hope is that it will inspire America to get more involved in the food they eat, how it is prepared.

I say: If you don't know how to cook, I'm sure you have at least one friend who knows how to cook. Well, call that friend and say, 'Can I come next time and can I bring some food and can I come an hour or two hours ahead and watch you and help you?'