The Cerritos College Culinary Arts Program has gone “Hollywood, ” it was recently featured on PBS’ award winning show “American Health Journal.”
The show has been dedicated to educating the public on health care issues since 1988.
The program is also scheduled to be featured on LA 18 here in Los Angeles for its choice in promoting healthy cooking and food diets.
Cerritos College chef instructor Michael Pierini, who has been teaching at Cerritos College for 18 years, sat down with the American Health Journal to talk about today’s food trends and health concerns. “We decided to pursue the project to address today’s society with obesity and health issues,” Pierini said.
“With television chefs on Food Network like Paula Deen and Rachel Ray promoting using lots of fats and salt, it’s our responsibility to promote somewhat of a healthy eating.”
The student salary free program which focus in teaching incoming students everything, from proper knife skills to meat and poultry fabrication, also focus much of its time into learning from the program’s very own Cafe.
The Cafe, where students rotate every week through various stations such as, line cooking, salads, breads, and more.
Students also learn many more aspects of a restaurant’s atmosphere by using the Cafe’s point of sale system and even creating their own menus.
“Although foods with lots of fats do tend to taste better, we’re trying to teach our students to think about their customers and always try to buy fresh produce opposed to canned or processed foods,” Ernest Lu instructor of the Culinary Arts program said.
The program has actually taken part of going “green” themselves, by using locally purchased produce as well as economically friendly products.
“I think its great! As the instructional lab technician, I do a lot of ordering for the program whether it’s food or paper goods I am very much for that and going green,” said the program’s Instructional Lab Technician Amanda Aiton.
The program, which showcases healthy driven plates every week, from salads to sandwiches, somehow keeps getting upstaged by other high-fat content plates.
“We have tried promoting health conscious foods, but it seems more like the kiss of death since students and faculty will not buy them,” Pierini shared.
“They want to come to reward themselves with high fat content foods after whether they went on a walk or simply because they’re eating out.”
“I loved the fact that the chefs here took the time to teach us how to cater to our customers,” alumni of the program and hospitality major student Debra Andres said.
You can view the Culinary Arts program’s feature episode on American Health Journal at the Cerritos College Culinary Arts official web page.
