Teaching Authentic Cooking Skills to Adults With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: Active Engagement is a unique instructional tool used to address two critical issues in working with adults with IDD: promoting healthy eating habits and teaching real-life skills that will enhance independence and self-determination.

The book features good nutritional principles and evidence-based instructional practices, incorporating direct instruction, individualized choice-making, and experiential learning. This is not a cookbook, although there are a number of adaptive recipes embedded as examples throughout.

This book provides detailed information on the Active Engagement program and how to implement it in teaching real cooking skills. Topics include:

    • Cooking as nutritional intervention
    • Teaching framework for cooking skills
    • Implementing cooking instruction around American consumption patterns
    • Teaching basic skills with adaptive tools
    • New approaches to recipes
    • Universal and specialized appliances
    • Supporting cooking skills with food skills

Janice Goldschmidt was awarded the 2018 Excellence in Written Communication Award from the Behavioral Health Nutrition Dietetics Practice Group of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics for this book.