the joys of cooking healthy food

By Christopher Pearson

As another school year closes in a few weeks, it’s time for parents to think about summer camp for their children. The husband and wife team of Maria and Arthur Cummins have an interesting suggestion – why not consider something exciting and different like their popular cooking camp for kids at The Real Food Academy?

On June 5th, The Real Food Academy will kick off its popular annual summer camp in a large sun-splashed building where children channel their inner chefs developing or honing their skills preparing a variety of foods that are healthy, nutritious and delicious.

Maria, a native of Venezuela who learned to cook healthy foods from her Peruvian father, launched a successful business in 2008 offering private cooking classes and children’s cooking parties in Miami Shores. Demand for the classes grew so rapidly that when her husband Arthur retired after a career in insurance, he joined her as Co-Founder of The Real Food Academy, which the pair launched in 2011.

They renovated a 5,300 square-foot, two-story building that features a large, well-appointed teaching kitchen, plenty of food preparation space and a café that is open to the public. During non-summer camp months, they stay busy providing adult cooking classes, corporate culinary retreats, team-building exercises, birthday parties, weddings and other special cooking events.

Among the delectable and healthful dishes on the teaching menu are avocado baked fries, vegetable frittata, marinated chicken kebabs, butternut squash ravioli, healthy pad thai, crispy salmon and quinoa fish fingers and pumpkin pie with chocolate crust.

“We don’t change the dish, we change the ingredients,” explains Maria. “We chose the name Real Food Academy because our mission is to focus on ingredients that are as close to organic as possible, using no processed foods. We are passionate about teaching the relationship between eating healthy and keeping healthy. The two go handin-hand.”

“What’s so wonderful about our culinary summer camp is that is provides children the chance to learn cooking skills, experiment in the kitchen, build friendships and expand their culinary palate,” says Arthur. “On top of that, they’re improving their math and reading skills, dancing Zumba and doing arts and crafts. Of course, we’re very careful about keeping everyone safe, wearing masks, washing hands, physically distancing and limiting the number of campers and staff.”

“Our primary mission, which we refer to as our North Star, is to educate families about the difference between real food and processed food and how unhealthy the latter is,” says Arthur.

One of the most popular camp activities is known as Food Detectives, where Maria teaches the campers how to read ingredient labels on food packages and what those names and numbers mean. “It’s always a shock to the kids when they realize that sugar is one of the top ingredients in breakfast cereals, which most of them had that morning for breakfast. Kids learn how eating healthy foods can potentially stave off future medical problems like diabetes and heart disease,” says Maria. The parents are as happy about the camp as the campers.

“My 13 year-old daughter attended this camp and loved it. It was a great combination of very good food, technique, great camp leaders and knowledge of nutrition. She is now correcting me on knife technique!," says parent Julia Santeliz.

Many of the campers come back every year and several have returned to help teach the newest generation of campers.

Starting June 5th and running until August 18th, The Real Food Academy Summer Camp runs for 11 weeks for kids ages 5-16 at 570 NE 81st Street in Miami. Hours are from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (with an extra charge for late pickup). We also offer private cooking classes in Miami for birthday parties, corporate events, or any other type of get-together, where one of our professional chefs will design a custom menu for the celebration.

The Real Food Academy is located at 570 NE 81st Street, Miami, Florida 33138. For more information, please visit ww.therealfoodacademy.com or call 786-395-0355.