Cooking Competition Sparks New Favourites for LTC Menus

Ready, set, bake!

The Ontario CLRI at the RIA hosted a cooking competition as part of the Nutrition in Disguise (NiD) project on Saturday, March 7.

Students from Conestoga College’s School of Hospitality & Culinary Arts competed to create nutritionally rich recipes using key ingredients to help fight malnutrition in long-term care homes. Most older adults don’t eat enough nutrients to stay healthy. The NiD project focuses on creating nutrient-dense recipes by adding healthy ingredients to common foods that older adults enjoy: think lentils in brownies, or wheat germ in apple muffins.

The competition will help us build a library of recipes that long-term care homes can work in to their menus without breaking their budget.

Contestants competed to win one of two $500 prizes for the best NiD Recipe in one of two categories: 1) Sweet: desserts, snacks and puddings, and 2) Savoury: spreads, soups, breakfast protein. Recipes were created using a specific pre-determined nutrient-dense ingredient to enhance nutrition. Winners from each category received $500 and the title of the best student NiD recipe!

The NiD project is part of Professor Heather Keller’s research at the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging. The Ontario CLRI is partnering with Prof. Keller to develop nutrition tools for long-term care homes based on the study findings.

The recipes were tasted and reviewed by a panel of judges:

Heather Keller, Research Chair in Nutrition and Aging, Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging;
Residents from Schlegel Villages;
Chef George Madalena, Schlegel Villages; and,
Lisa Duizer, University of Guelph’s Food Science Department.