RATTLING those pots and pans with the help of Orford youngsters was something out of the ordinary for Sunshine Children’s Centre.

But they were encouraged to get in the mood for healthy food thanks to TV favourite Ainsley Harriot who called in to the O’Leary Street centre to teach them about healthy cooking.

The centre won a national competition run by Change4Life to have a cooking demonstration from the Ready Steady Cook star come with the help of youngsters from William Beamont Primary School.

Ainsley praised the work which had been put in at the centre He said: “I think it’s been quite inspiring when you discover the amount of work that has been put in by youngsters and staff members who are also parents and they realise the importance of knowing about fruit and veg and how healthy they can be under a controlled diet.

“It’s also about making children and parents more aware such as how much fat is in things or the sodium level which is salt and fructose, you think it’s nothing but it’s sugar.

“We are going into schools where not everyone has a garden to show them where vegetables come from then at school they can understand how things like herbs grow and recognise vegetables and how they grow.”

Staff, parents and children had been involved in a range of activities to help promote healthy eating.

Support worker Diane Tarnawski added: “All through the year we have had lots of events including the parents cooking food from the website so they could share it with others.

“In our sessions we always do cooking every six weeks with the children and have tastings of new healthy foods for them to try.”

And on Friday morning Ainsley got behind the hob to cook a pasta dish and make a healthy salad.

But it was not without incident as one of his helpers Lewis Sutton got lemon in his eye while making a dressing for the salad and found the taste of his finished product ‘a bit shocking’.

Yet the pasta dish with chicken, peas and a creme fraiche and horseradish sauce went down well.

“The kids sampled it and they weren’t sure about the horseradish which they tried, when they tried it in the finished dish they didn’t just taste it they went back again,” Ainsley added.