RECONNECTING CHILDREN WITH WHERE THEIR FOOD COMES FROM

Stephanie Valentine, Education Director of the British Nutrition Foundation, outlines the initiatives that are encouraging both children and adults to reconnect with food sources, food preparation and a healthy lifestyle.

Do children really believe that potatoes grow on trees? (Or do they just have a very well developed sense of humour?) Well, if they believed this before, there is no reason why they should do now! There is just such a lot happening to encourage children and adults alike to get excited about food. It may have been celebrity chefs who started the move, but now everyone seems to be getting in on the idea.

This is the Year of Food and Farming. There will be masses of opportunities over the next few months for children to visit farms and see for themselves how their food is grown. It has already begun this September (2007) and will run for the whole school year. But, the intention is that it will be so engaging and educational that the campaign will leave a legacy that will long outlast the year itself. For details of what is available locally, go to: www.yearoffoodandfarming.org.uk.

Happy, healthy children who grow up able to make informed choices about what they eat — how great would that be? One of the most important starting points is for them to know where their food comes from. Some are fortunate enough to live near farms or have families who ‘grow their own’ at home. For most, however, carrots come in plastic bags and milk arrives from a shop in a carton. I believe the term ‘concrete children’ was coined recently to refer to city children who have never visited the countryside in their lives. More and more schools are encouraging children to start small, perhaps with a pot of herbs on the window sill, tomatoes in a hanging basket or potatoes in a bucket. This is also something they could do at home. How exciting if you are six years old, to grow your own mustard and cress from seed and then make it into a sandwich or salad and eat it. Have a look at ‘Growing Schools’ for bright ideas of how to get started and where to go for resources (see: www.teachernet.gov.uk/growingschools).

Cooking is not just a life skill (although a vital one). It can be fun, too! Important messages about healthy eating are much more likely to be learned and remembered through practical activities. What is that old Chinese proverb? “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.”

Encouraging children to eat more fruit and vegetables is a tough challenge for most parents, but letting children choose a fruit they have not tried before and make it into a smoothie for the family to share for breakfast is great fun. If they are shown how to use a knife safely to slice a banana, they will not chop their fingers off or make too much mess in the kitchen. And choosing fruit that is locally grown and in season won’t break the housekeeping budget either. A new food and farming module on the ‘Food — a fact of life’ website for primary-school children, www.foodafactoflife.org.uk, recently launched by the British Nutrition Foundation in association with five levy boards, provides plenty of recipes in printed and video format to get children started. This is something children can use at school, in after-school clubs or access at home if they have a computer. They will also find lots of colourful photographs of farming around the UK and foods both familiar and unusual on this site.

Some children and young people are lucky enough to be taught how to cook at school. An inspirational teacher does more than just teach children to cook: they enthuse them with a passion for food which lasts a whole life time. And parents, grandparents and other family members can be excellent role models simply by taking children shopping and letting them help to choose and prepare family meals. Healthy eating doesn’t mean that you cannot enjoy all sorts of food as part of a varied and balanced diet. So, what is the secret to capturing children’s imaginations and equipping them with the skills to cook for themselves, their friends and families? If we want children to grow up to become confident and competent to cook tasty, healthy meals, we need to look out for all the great opportunities there are to learn to cook and enjoy eating a variety of different foods.

Credit where due, the Department for Children, Schools and Families has continued to support the excellent Food Partnership scheme (which teams up secondary-school food specialist teachers with local primary-school colleagues in order to share good practice) and recently commissioned a consortium, led by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, with the Design and Technology Association and the British Nutrition Foundation, to develop the ‘Licence to Cook’ (an entitlement for all young people to learn to cook before they leave school). Go to www.schoolsnetwork.org.uk/cooking for further information.

The School Food Trust, along with a number of consortium partners, has recently been awarded a £20mn grant from the BIG Lottery fund to develop 2,000 new ‘Let’s Get Cooking’ clubs around England. These will not be part of the formal school curriculum and may take place in a variety of community settings. The clubs will be supported with resources, training and funding. Existing cooking clubs will not be left out and will be encouraged to become associated with the scheme too. The first cohort of clubs is being recruited now, and an exciting pack of autumn recipes is printed and ready to test out (see: www.letsgetcooking.org.uk).

The Food Standards Agency has been conducting a public consultation on a set of draft core food competences that will help to define what children should know, understand and be able to do by certain ages. These are currently being modified to take account of suggestions from the consultation and will be published later this year. These will be available for use throughout the UK. Based on four core themes — diet and health; consumer awareness; food preparation and handling skills; and food hygiene and safety — the food competences will help those working with young people to identify some of the building blocks that can help young people learn more about food and health. Look out on www.food.gov.uk at the end of October 2007.

And finally, parents, grandparents and other family members can be excellent role models simply by taking children shopping and letting them help to choose and prepare family meals. It doesn’t have to be a complex task. Healthy eating doesn’t mean that you cannot enjoy all sorts of food as part of a varied and balanced diet. So, what is the secret to capturing children’s imaginations and equipping them with the skills to cook for themselves, their friends and families? Why not encourage them to prepare their own snacks and meals? A pitta pocket can be so much more exciting than a plain sandwich. How many ideas can they come up with for dips and dippers? (How about hummus and carrot sticks or salsa and tortilla chips?)

So, it seems that there is a part for each of us to play in helping to reconnect children to where their food comes from. It is so important if we want our children to have a healthy life and for the future well-being of the planet. I will be interested to hear any ideas for how we may be able to work together to achieve this.

Biography of Stephanie Valentine, Education Director of the British Nutrition

Foundation

Stephanie is Education Director at the British Nutrition Foundation, where she runs the education programme. Working with a small, but talented team, she runs projects for government departments and companies, produces multimedia resources, gives presentations, writes articles and provides courses and conferences for teachers throughout the UK.