Taste Quest at the Nashville Wellness Fest

Taste Quest is a nonprofit organization that empowers kids to learn about food and cooking through play, build critical life skills, and complete cooking quests. Bring your children to the Nashville Wellness Fest on May 6 for a FREE cookery session. Find out more from the founder of Taste Quest, Emily Sauerman.

I am so excited to be teaming up with PURELiving Nashville and the Nashville Wellness Fest for kids’ cooking class on May 6. Kids and grownups are welcome to come and PLAY with food and learn more about our nonprofit, Taste Quest, and our brand-new group activity kit, Snack Around the World!

Why should we all be playing with food? Glad you asked! Let me explain…

Several years ago, while developing ideas for a cooking magazine for kids, I came across a video that has shaped the mission that shortly after became Taste Quest. In the video, which produced by a nonprofit in Norway, a classroom of a children hear a bell and begin opening their lunch boxes on their desks. One of the boys opens his lunchbox to find it empty. Too ashamed to ask for help and too hungry to stay in the room, he goes into the hallway to wait for the end of lunchtime. When he comes back in to put away his lunchbox, he is amazed to find it full of food. In his absence, his classmates solved the problem.

I still tear-up thinking about this image. This is not just because a hungry child eats, but rather because the other kids knew they had the agency for real, positive change. They identified the problem and set about creatively meeting a need. Food is a fantastic tool for growing a sense of agency, and so if we can harness the power of food to grow agency in kids, then the future will be bright indeed.

It is this idea of agency that drives our mission: to EMPOWER kids to nourish their bodies, their families, and their communities through play-based food education. Too many kids don’t realize the capacity they have for real-life, positive change. With food education, they practice the agency to try something new, manipulate it, make it beautiful, share it with others, and make a lasting impact in their relationships. Taste Quest, therefore, is about teaching nutrition and culinary skills, but also about teaching critical life skills that see positive effects ripple throughout the rest of their lives.

What’s more, Taste Quest is about PLAY! Research in the science of learning is clear: guided play is the best way to learn! Play alters our mindset such that problems become puzzles and learning can be a game. Given this, Taste Quest sets up this hypothesis: if kids play with food, life-long benefits will follow! Hence our tag line: Seriously, Kids, Play with Your Food!

At the cooking class, we will be learning how to make Vietnamese Summer Rolls, one of the activities from our newly launched activity kits. We will also be playing one of the games from the kit, so come ready to play!

Learn More about Taste Quest at tastequest.org and follow us @tastequesthq. See you at the Wellness Fest! Get your tickets here (kids go free, no ticket required!).