After nearly three decades of cooking, including traveling the world as a private chef to some of the world’s most rich and powerful, celebrity Chef Eduardo Garcia – better known to some as the “Bionic Chef” because of his prosthetic arm – has learned the star ingredient to any recipe.
“The most important ingredient you can have is care,” said Garcia, recounting what he told students during a visit to a Los Angeles Unified School District campus on Tuesday, April 23.
The celebrity chef and host of Magnolia Network’s “Big Sky Kitchen with Eduardo Garcia” was in town to participate in events with Common Threads, a national nonprofit that uses nutrition education to promote healthy eating and community health. Garcia sits on the nonprofit’s national board.
Garcia and Linda Novick O’Keefe, co-founder and CEO of Common Threads, dropped by the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies in Tarzana to observe students in a Kitchen Clinic run by the nonprofit. The day’s menu included fish tacos, Spanish rice, coleslaw and chocolate chip cookie dough hummus.
Kitchen Clinic is a program that engages high schoolers in hands-on cooking and nutrition education. Over 10 weeks, students try out new recipes, learn about the medicinal properties in certain foods and hear from health professionals ranging from doulas to psychiatrists, cardiologists and gastroenterologists to better understand the relationship between foods and one’s overall health.
“It’s wonderful to see these kids understand how important it is to be intentional with what their choices are and ensuring that they really are cooking and eating and making healthy choices for themselves and their families,” said Novick O’Keefe.
“The imprint of our health is directly related to what we eat and drink,” she said.
About half the participants go on to serve as chef instructor assistants, co-teaching cooking classes to elementary students, as part of a 30-hour paid internship.
Part of the goal of the Kitchen Clinic program is to get students thinking about careers in hospitality or healthcare where culinary medicine can improve patient outcomes.
Over 150 LAUSD students have participated in the clinic, which launched two years ago. The program is offered at four LAUSD campuses, though Novick O’Keefe said she hopes to see it expand to more campuses in the district.
Although the Kitchen Clinic is a relatively new program, Common Threads as a nonprofit has been around for two decades and has partnered with LAUSD on programs for 17 years, Novick O’Keefe said. In all, the nonprofit offers programs to more than 750 schools and community partner sites in 10 major U.S. cities.
For Garcia, losing his left arm after being electrocuted by a 2,400-volt power line while hunting in Montana’s backcountry in 2011, then having to learn how to navigate his way around a kitchen with a prosthetic limb, gave him a fresh perspective on life.
Now, the “Bionic Chef,” who also sees himself as an advocate for food equity, cherishes the opportunity to inspire and motivate others.
“My role is instilling a spark to anything in relation to food and (having students) observe in their own life … how they feel, how they are, how they think and commune with others,” he said.