My name is Annmarie Cantrell and I am so excited to be one of the facilitators in this enrichment program. I was raised in a home where food was always front and center. My mother had an incredible gift of nurturing her family and friends through nourishment and she created a culture in which the kitchen was the heart and soul of the household. As I grew up, I valued good food but became disconnected from it. In my 20s when I was working as a child development specialist for young children with special needs, I had a health crisis which conventional medicine really couldn’t touch. I had to go back to the very basics- food. I learned that many things that I thought were “healthy” were actually exacerbating my symptoms. It was a journey which got me back into the kitchen. I attended a culinary nutrition school and began teaching others how to use food to heal. I am especially passionate about the health of children in this country and teaching children and their parents about food. We see many childhood illnesses rising, but I firmly believe that we do not need to accept that childhood disease is an inevitable consequence of growing up in today’s toxic society. We have the power to change the trajectory of children’s health in this country and see our younger generations thriving again. We do this by getting children connected to food and connected to their bodies!! These classes will aim to do just that in a fun, exploratory way! My philosophy around food is pretty simple, but it tends to go against the “ governmental nutritional standards”.