Guest Post: On Kids' Knowledge of Food
The following post is guest-written by one of our student interns, Chris.
Often we make jokes about old technologies, realizing how foreign they will be to our children. Just last week I joked with my father that my kids will never know what a landline phone is. This is, however, understandable— with development and advances, older technology becomes obsolete.
Yet a similar trend is occurring within the food industry— whole foods are becoming "obsolete" in favor of their processed counterparts. You can see this in children, who have grown up eating more french fries and potato chips than actual potatoes.
In 2010 British chef Jamie Oliver spoke at a TED conference about the causes behind the increasingly unhealthy diets of children. He had gone into an elementary school and asked children to identify various vegetables. Holding a handful of tomatoes, he asked a boy if he knew what they were, and got "potatoes" as a response.
Unfortunately, it didn't get much better from there: one student could not identify cauliflower, though another student got fairly close with “broccoli." They were totally stumped on a beet, guessing that it was “celery” or “an onion."
Needless to say, I was pretty stunned to find children so uninformed about basic vegetables—far more than my own generation. I learned about different fruits and vegetables by going to the supermarket with my mother—and although at eight years old I probably couldn't identify a pomegranate, I certainly knew the difference between celery and a beet.
One study conducted by the Dairy Farmers of Britain found that children are similarly uninformed when it comes to meat and dairy products. And the National Farmers' Union and Home Grown Cereals Authority reported similar statistics about meat: 26% of children thought bacon came from sheep and 29% thought that oats grow on trees. When they added adults under 30 to the study, 17% thought eggs were a central ingredient for making bread.
Knowledge and Health
Widespread obesity and diabetes are directly related to this lack of awareness, but it's not the only cause. It's important to understand that we as individuals aren't totally at fault for this trend in the food industry. But now we are seeing the effects of an mostly-invisible industrialized food system, and now it's our responsibility to teach our kids about food and food choices. Remember, this is the first generation that is expected to have shorter lifespans than we enjoy today.
Kids whose idea of food is a squashed cheeseburger wrapped in wax paper have been cheated—out of real food, a healthy diet, and ultimately, out of long and healthy life.
As conscious parents, consumers, and community members, we need to demand that our children are taught about food and proper diets, and that they have the knowledge that will enable them to feed themselves later in life.
One place to start is with school food—check out this resource guide for parents to rally for better food in schools.
This is also why Local Matters' Food Matters curriculum is so effective: it teaches kids at a young age that food comes from somewhere! Whether you live in Somalia, Guatemala or Ohio, there are foods that grow around you and foods that grow in other places.
Students also learn that there are different kinds of food—like grains, fruits or fats—and some kinds are better than others.
This may seem like basic knowledge, but it but they're an important foundation for healthful decisions into their teenage years and adulthood.
Blog Categories: Food Matters
- Chris's blog
- Login or register to post comments



Comments: