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JAMIE OLIVER HAS launched a campaign for food education to be placed on the school curriculum in several countries, including the UK.
The celebrity chef has long campaigned against the growing problem of obesity and diet-related diseases.
He’s now launched an online petition about food education that he will send to all G20 governments. More than 143,000 people have signed it to date.
Children are suffering unnecessarily, but I’ve got a plan … I believe that it’s a child’s human right to be taught how to grow and cook fresh, nutritious food at school.
Do you think Oliver is right?
[poll]
Should food education be mandatory in schools?
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Means nothing if the parents aren’t educated as well.
Children can teach their parents
Good idea. H.E. and biology touch on nutrition but these are not mandatory subjects in state exams. Everybody needs food, everybody should be educated about it.
Home Ec does more than ‘touch on the subject’. Nutrition, healthy eating and learning to cook are integral to our subject.
I get such satisfaction seeing students preparing and cooking their own dishes
It’s such a vital life skill!
With food education and knowledge we can have such a positive influence for their futures.
Scrap religious education and introduce healthy eating and lifestyle education.
Religions have dietary restrictions
Great idea.
Which of the below options is more beneficial to children and is an important thing to equip them for life?
Option (A) : A focus on healthy nutrition and proper exercise, the benefits and the importance of same.
Option (B) : “Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross for your sins. He did this to appease God, his father. There are 3-gods-in-one, the father, the son and the holy ghost.”
Answers on a postcard to…
I met a kid once who just gotten out of state care at eighteen and was left to fend for himself. He had never even known or been shown basic things. He didn’t know how to turn on an oven, or even know how to make toast! A friend of mine works as a home economics teacher and got in touch with him through a friend and showed him loads of basics. It was one of the best things ever and he was so proud of himself ! Such a basic thing ! I know people my own age (23) who wouldn’t know how to roast a chicken or even make a basic soup ! So much cheaper and healthier! Kids should definitely be taught these skills!
Too right, there should be classes in place to educate adults too, a healthy diet is the key ingredient for a healthy & happy life.
Anything that can help sway the mindset that healthy food can also be convenient, is a good idea..
Great idea but this probally will only happen is the better area schools wheres there’s better funding and more class choices ,a lot of poorer families and underprivileged kids eat a lot of junk food , sugary crap from a young age and these are the schools it should be taught to the kids and maybe even the parents
It will be the opposite, most schools in disadvantaged areas have free breakfast and lunch clubs, so children recieve free healthy food daily. Many of the deis schools in disadvantaged areas do healthy eating/cookery programmes for parents and teens with a low take it up. Schools in middle class areas won’t get any funding to do this!!
That’s not just for disadvantage areas , there is a lot of community areas in the country that run these schemes too .
I’m surprised this kind of thing isn’t already on the UK curriculum. Its an important part of the SPHE and Science curriculums in Ireland at primary level.
Should be taught in Primary school (pester power age) and reinforced at regular intervals throughout the education system.
But this would only work if the parents are on board, so introduce it to ante natal classes and also allow time during the latter developmental check ups with the PHN.
The ironic thing is the best changing facilities are always in fast food restaurants….
Saw it in a documentary that US doctors only get 25hrs nutritionional training in their 7 year training. Food has to be part of some illness recovery plans.
Same as irish doctors..thats why they have dietitians
Jamie Oliver has always been a fat guy, what’s he on about?
Maybe he wants to help improve children’s health,
Then he should drop the word “food” and say “education should be compulsory”.
Excellent point Boganity. It’s often overlooked that one of the most enduring and replicated results of research in the social sciences is that higher levels of education are associated with better health outcomes and a longer life-span.
Being literate and numerate have significant health benefits. For example many school-leavers lack the literacy skills to read a recipe in one of Oliver’s books and even more lack the numeracy skills (proportional reasoning) to work out how to adapt a recipe for four people in order to feed five people.
Should Jamie Oliver p1ss off and quit telling us how unhealthy we are – I think so!
Do you not think we should educate our children? Is it not through reflection of our actions we can improve in the future and would helping children improve their health not benefit all of society? Or should we demonstrate the intellectual capacity of a gold fish and tell him to p1ss off?
I was in the shop last weekend and saw two heavily overweight parents with there three heavily overweight children arguing over what sweets to get in the sweet isle. If a bit of education has the ability to cut down on that sort of careless unhealthy over-eating then may Jamie Oliver and others like him continue to campaign for better food education.
Of course cooking should be taught in schools. People need to learn basic recipes like baking bread, soda bread is simple, fruit salad, basic pasta sauce, roast a chicken, stews and casseroles. We should tax the sh.te out of sugary cereals, porridge is 1/4 the price and far more nutritious.
Only way to start the day is with porridge. Throw in a few blueberrys or a banana and your good until lunchtime.
His campaign might at least steer kids away from fast food…..his displays of what goes into chicken burgers and beef products are brilliant…I.e. they show how disgusting tgat food is!
Agree George. The schools shouldn’t allow students out of grounds at lunch hour to fill their bellies with greasy food. I see them pouring into the takeaways in my town.
Should food education be compulsory? Absolutely for
- parents
- politicians
- medical profession
Denmark and Switzerland banned Trans fats in 2006 …. Ireland still waiting?
Avoidance of Trans Fats (artificial man made) in food can completely reverse Diabetes Type 2.
That and a first aid course should be compulsory.
Home Ec covers food education to a very deep level. Subjects such as nutrition, the Irish diet, the Irish food industry, special dietary related problems, food processing, food hygiene and of course culinary skills are all included in the syllabus However, it’s not compulsory and doesn’t feature at all in boys only schools, which is a shame as it is so enjoyable and yet an essential part of life.
The UK got rid of the subject home ec back in the 1990′s and I can’t help but feel they are regretting it.
He’s just a famous guy up on his high horse throwing his name out there for more fame and glory, nothing gets past me ever!
It’s better than being a not so famous guy posting on forums to try and throw his name about. Nothing gets past me either :)
Do, and watch the ‘food industry’ oppose it
with the same vigor as Monsanto and big Tobacco
oppose labeling
At least it will give kids half a chance if they are thought something at school about food. Yes they will eat what their parents give them because at the end of the day they have to. What child knows any different.
It will make them more conscience the older they get though and hopefully the damage won’t be too bad.
Is there good evidence on the efficacy of food education?
Well I did a lesson two months ago where we calculated the salt and sugar content of popular foods and drinks consumed by the children and spooned it into sandwich bags and displayed it. The childrens lunches have changed dramatically since.
If children “under the age of 5″ are obese, surely that’s not because of a lack of “food education”? At that age most of them haven’t even begun primary school.
“Food education” is another example of the idea that schools exist only a place where one can access a captive audience for your society-improving idea. The problem with targeting school children is that it’s at once too early, and too late.
It’s too late because, as the figures show obesity doesn’t start in the primary or secondary school. It starts as soon as children are born in many cases. Very few schoolchildren have responsibility for their own diets; those that do tend to have other problems as well.
The thinking might be; teach these children how to grow and cook food so that when in X number of years they become parents themselves, they’ll save the next generation from obesity. Except school-based interventions don’t work for that kind of social engineering. For years kids have been getting lessons on the dangers of drinking, unsafe sex and burning fossil fuels yet these practices have not decreased. Why should we think “food education” would be any more successful?
Having a school garden where children learn about the life-cycle of plants and what vegetables look like in a non-sanitized state is a great idea. The skills and knowledge taught in Home Ec make it a very worthwhile subject. But let’s not forget whose responsibility it is both to feed children, and to impart the skills that will allow them to feed themselves: parents.
It’s a lot easier for Oliver to call on “schools” to take action than to upset his potential customers by saying many parents don’t feed their kids properly, and if they don’t know how (even basic skills can be lost in a generation), see it as their responsibility to find out how. Rather than calling for more cookery in schools, maybe he might like to recommend a state-funded “How to Feed Yourself and Others” course for adults?
Not a bad idea, as many do not know the benefits or dangers of food?
have your say