543: Getting Teens Psyched About Prepping, Cooking, And Eating Real Food With Leona Vrbanac

Wise Traditions

Weston A. Price Foundation

Wellness, Health & Fitness, Alternative Health, Nutrition, Diet, Health

4.7 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A teacher offers a culinary class at a traditional urban high school in Ohio. There is a waiting list to be in the class. What gives?! How is this teacher making real food – preparing it, cooking it, and eating it – cool? Leona Vrbanac shares her secrets and tips in today's episode. She explains how she helps teens move from embracing junk to nourishing themselves with food that they harvest and learn to prepare themselves! The skills she helps them acquire serve them for the rest of their lives.

Follow Leona on Instagram at @eat.love.learn

Join our Nourishing Our Children group at nourishingourchildren.org/groups

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Transcript

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0:00.0	students will often make a blanket statement like I don't eat vegetables or I don't eat fruit
0:05.9	or I don't drink milk and really what they're saying in my mind is I've had such a poor
0:11.8	experience or I felt so unwell after inexperience.
0:29.3	From the Weston A. Price Foundation, welcome to the Wise Traditions podcast for wise traditions in food, farming, and the healing arts.
0:34.8	We are your source for scientific knowledge and traditional wisdom to help you achieve optimal health.
0:43.0	And now here is our host and producer, Hilda Labrata Gore.
0:46.2	Hey, Hilda here.
0:50.6	Tockeys, Gatorade, crumble cookies, and fast food.
0:56.1	Honestly, ultra-processed food is as close as our teen's cell phone and the corner 7-Eleven.
1:01.8	How do we help them move away from the junk that is damaging their health and toward real food and traditions that enhance it? This is episode 543 and our guest today is Leona Verbenek.
1:08.5	Leona is a culinary teacher in a public urban high school in Ohio,
1:12.6	and her class is so popular that she has a waiting list of students who want to take it.
1:17.8	So what's her secret? How is she making real food, ancestral traditions, gardening, and cooking?
1:24.7	Cool. What resources does she offer? What tips and tricks does she have? Her approach
1:29.7	just may hold keys for you to inspire your teenagers and pretty much anybody around you into
1:35.7	eating and living in a more ancestral fashion and to have their health benefit to. Before we get into
1:41.7	the conversation, are you a parent, a would-be parent, a grandparent,
1:46.4	or an adult interested in children's health? Nourishing our children is a project of the West
1:51.5	and A Price Foundation. It was launched in 2005 with a focus on timeless principles for supporting,
1:58.7	learning, behavior, and health through optimal nutrition.
2:02.6	Nourishing our children has an active closed Facebook group that offers support on how to
2:06.3	nourish and not merely feed your children. If you join, you'll have complementary access
	...

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