ORANGE PARK - Carbonated drinks, refined sugars, artificial stuff and processed foods.

Certified Healthy Hands Cooking Instructor Corina Danielson said these are all important things to eliminate from any healthy food diet. And with running her mobile Cuisine Conqueror Cooking Classes since 2021, she is working to make that happen.

“If you can’t read it, you shouldn’t eat it,” Danielson said.

 In what she calls her fun, outgoing, and crazy classes, Danielson teaches her students step-by-step how to make everything from scratch. She allows them to choose what they want to eat, but she said she puts a healthier spin on whatever they pick. 

“We’ll do a chocolate cake or we’ll do brownies, but ours is going to be a little different,” Danielson said. “Ours might have sweet potatoes in it, or ours might have black beans in them.

Starting as a Tastefully Simple consultant, Danielson said she would often host cooking parties. She noticed how many adults were unaware of basic cooking skills and knowledge there. 

“I’ve been to thousands of people’s homes and they didn’t have but maybe a paring knife,” Danielson said. “They didn’t know that there’s other knives. And they didn’t know what to use them for.” 

After she began teaching adults, she said it progressed to also teaching children, as parents always want the best for their children. 

“You can’t fault them if they’ve never been taught,” Danielson said. 

Although her cooking lessons remain open to all ages, Danielson’s main focus is on children and helping them craft their culinary skills and knowledge of food as early as possible.

“We focus on having kids learn to cook real, good food from scratch. Nothing from boxes,” Danielson said.

Danielson said that using mostly organic ingredients is all about teaching children how to make better food choices. 

“As opposed to applesauce or apple juice, eat the real apple,” Danielson said. “Enjoy the benefit of that.” 

Danielson said her classes exercise the mantra of "don’t yuck on anybody else’s yum." By doing this, students are able to try what they want and get a sense of whether or not they are fans without the judgment of others. 

Danielson said she has noticed children's diets shift when they are around others, stemming from peer pressure to like only certain foods. 

 Danielson said it's amazing to see the look on a child’s face when they discover they like something, especially after they’ve cooked it themselves. 

“I call it the ‘aha’ moment,” Danielson said. It occurs when somebody says, ‘Oh, I don’t like that.’ And then they make it themselves and fall in love with it.

Eating healthy has always been a huge part of Danielson's life. She was raised in a small town in rural Nebraska, and her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were cooks, greatly influencing her. 

She said she would always be down by the creek picking wild raspberries. 

“[We] learned from the Earth,” Danielson said. “We ate food right out of the dirt.”

Working in culinary, Danielson said she wants to give children that same freedom, to eat fresh ingredients from what is grown from the Earth, not from what is processed. 

She said that by doing so, they can experience a healthier diet and a healthier life. 

“Blueberries, the color blue, that’s good for your blood,” Danielson said. “How walnuts, they look like a brain, well that’s because it’s good for your brain. And, how kidney beans look like a kidney, well they’re good for your kidneys.” 

Even though we know how to utilize these healthy foods in our everyday diets, Danielson added that it’s important to have easy access to them. She said that is a work in progress. 

“It is sad that real food is getting pushed out,” Danielson said. “It used to be the artificial stuff was only in two or three aisles, you know, one aisle. Now, it’s almost the whole entire store is all full of the artificial stuff and you only get a small little section of real fruit and real stuff.”

For now, Danielson said she will keep making an impact on the lives of everyone, but especially young children. 

Cuisine Conqueror Cooking Classes offers many class types, including birthday parties, kids classes, cooking camps, and adult nutrition and wellness classes. And, with the benefit of being mobile, Danielson said she can travel from spot to spot and make a huge difference everywhere she goes. 

“In the long run, we need to be healthier,” Danielson said. “And, we need to learn to make better choices. And you can’t learn to make better choices if you’re not educated.”