It has been an amazing pleasure to work with Andrea Guzman from Proyecto CAN. Andrea is a nutritionist who has helped develop wonderful nutrition workshops, recipe books and videos. In this course the participants receive a recipe book for babies. However all the recipes can be used for any age. The cookbook uses pictures as many mothers cannot read.
Andrea came to Chuk Muk and did excellent workshops on basic nutrition for infants and young children in March 2022. The moms ( and grandmothers) watched a video that explained how the Conquistadores altered the traditional diet by burning the fields of chia and amaranthus. And how consumption of processed foods have exacerbated the problem. It is common in Guatemala to feed infants coffee, coca cola and corn starch. This course teaches how to feed a child a healthy yet inexpensive diet. The moms are also taught how to make complete protein by pairing different foods.
Andrea also taught 2 of our students how to run future workshops. They both speak Tzu’tujil and Spanish fluently. Our 2 students, Rosa and Miriam, translated the information into Tzu’tujil for the moms that do not understand Spanish. Rosa is currently studying to be a chef and Miriam is in her 5th year of university studying to be a teacher. They are both excellent educators.
Everyone had a lot of fun cooking low cost, healthy food at our learning centre.
They do not get many opportunities to cook as a group.
and then sit down for a communal meal.
The families are very poor and never go to a restaurant or invite another family over for a meal.
These classes are filled with laughter.
Then the participant goes home with the exact food they need to remake this menu at home. We have found that a mother that takes 3 or more classes starts changing the way she cooks at home and starts incorporating these new recipes into her food preparation.