Kids and Food

I didn't watch Junior Master Chef on principle.  That principle being that I think getting kids to think about making food as a time-dependent competitive activity is the worst way to get kids to engage with food. I know, I know, I have friends who tell me of kids they know who have taken a sudden interest in food after watching the show. I'd like to know how long the enthusiasm lasted - past the first stuffed up attempt at quenelles?

If course I think kids should learn to cook, but like other learning I think it has to come over time, with a thorough engagement in the process of learning, including a high degree of self-direction. That's certainly how I learned to appreciate the process of provisioning from the thinking of what to cook, through buying the ingredients, cooking it, serving it up and eating it; to appreciate the thoughtfulness that makes for a satisfying meal, one that does more than looking good on a plate. It's about the time it should take to be thoughtful at all stages, including reflecting post consumption, and the time it should take to embedding the learning from this.

Let me tell you about two women and the programs they run that I think are way more effective than Junior Master Chef will ever be in embedding good foodways in kids.

Kay Richardson has for a number of years now run the Children's Food Education Foundation. I won't go so much into what Kay does cause you can read all about it on her site. Briefly, though, the purposes of the Foundation are:

• Promoting an understanding of food, health, nutrition and healthy food choices by children and young people in order to prevent and/or control childhood obesity and/or the diseases medically linked or associated with childhood obesity including, but not limited to Type 2 Diabetes, Asthma, Coronary Heart Disease and Depression.
• Facilitating, coordinating and supporting the development and dissemination of information for the education of children and young people in relation to food, health, nutrition and healthy food choices;
• Developing resources for use by children and young people who may be impoverished, sick or disadvantaged, or for use by schools or other relevant persons or institutions who can deliver food education initiatives which promote an understanding of food, health, nutrition and healthy food choices
• Monitoring, evaluating and disseminating research knowledge in an accessible form so that it can be better used by policy makers, practitioners and educators.
  

 Kay is now also doing work with food security and you can find out about that at The Big Feed.

The other person I wanted to talk about is Helen Campbell who has single-handedly begun running Semain de Gout - the Week of Taste in Australia. SDG began in France and engages schools, communities, food producers, chefs in a one week program each year where kids learn about foodways through coming to understand taste. They may go on visits to producers and manufacturers, chefs come into the classroom and cook with them or demonstrate dishes which are then avidly consumed and there is a simple curriculum that teachers can run over the week. Helen has organised it in the last two years in October in Sydney to overlap with the other food and wine events that happen in New South Wales at the time. The number of schools she has involved, and the number of chefs, is growing. What's particularly great about the latter area is that chefs who have kids at a local school, or who have cafes and restaurants in the local area are encouraged to get involved in the local school, which builds a fantastic relationship with the kids then, who can go off with their parents to the cafe, restaurant whatever and have a meal, talk with the chef, show of their knowledge etc.

Helen hasn't set up a website yet, but if you read French you can check out a number of sites about the French Semain de Gout.

I wanted to mention the work of these two women because I think what they are doing is so much more long term effective in embedding good food practices in kids.  Yes, I know, Stephanie Alexander is also doing fantastic work with her school gardens projects. But I wanted to give the big thumbs up to these two women who don't get the kind of publicity and support that Stephanie does. Please, have a look at Kay's site and consider what you can offer in support. And if you want to contact Helen, then I can give you her email. You can email me at pvanreyk.com.au.

But hey, you can get your kids or kids you know learning about foodways too, if you don't already.In earlier posts I talked a little about my early childhood experiences with watching food being made in the kitchens of my grandmother, mother and father. I think learning starts here.  If kids are off somewhere in front of a screen while the home meals are being prepared, it's no wonder they don't understand how a meal is produced.

Actually the learning starts before this. When I was growing up in Singleton, I had a friend called Patrick Murphy and I used to sometimes go over to his place on a Saturday morning and stay till after dinner. When I did, Patrick and I (both aged 10 at the time) would start our morning together in doing the weeks shopping for his family. His mum would give us a list, and off we would go the grocer, butcher, fruiterer hauling one of those oblong-vinyl-on-wheels shopping carts of the '60s (I loved the variety of patterning on the vinyl and have fond memories of one that was all orange daisy like flowers), just about the right money in our pocket (always a little over for us to buy an ice cream or some sweets). When we got back to Patrick's home, we helped his mum unpack and stow away our purchases, then we went off to play till it was time to start preparing lunch or dinner at which time we would be volunteered to peel the potatoes or wash the lettuce or some such. This gave me a fantastic grounding in the production of a meal. Patrick's (it was never Pat) would have read the local paper the week before and know what the specials were and we would be given quite explicit instructions about this too, and so I learned about household economy as well  - Patrick's family was large and working class and the shillings and pence (we were a few years short of going decimal) mattered.

Recently, when I was asked to develop a program for early childhood literacy, one of the suggested techniques I came across, and used, for developing language skills, not just written literacy, but aural literacy as well, was to get parents to engage their child from their earliest years, before they can articulate words even, in drawing up a shopping list, including food items, and then to take the child shopping and to verbalise to/with the child as items were bought and show them being crossed off the list. Patrick's mum wasn't of course consciously teaching us language, we were pretty advanced in it by then, but you can see how linking the hearing and seeing of a word for an item, then the purchase of it, and then seeing/tasting how it is used would deepen understanding of language and its relationship to the real world. As importantly, you begin from the earliest age immersing the child in foodways that they are going to have to use independently at some stage in their lives.

I bought my 9 year old son, Arlo, his first cookbook last Christmas, one with Italian recipes that are easy for kids to make with a little supervision. He doesn't live with me, but his mum and he have made dishes from the book and he has been very receptive to this. This year he got a dog for his birthday, and for Christmas I gave him a book of recipes for making doggie treats and snacks. Earlier this week he came over for the day and I asked him to bring his doggie cookbook with him. We read the recipes together and selected two that looked easy enough to begin on, went shopping for the ingredients, made the treats together, and then had the pleasure of feeding his dog and my three on food they clearly enjoyed and that we had made, not bought. I have no doubt he will continue to make these and other dishes for the dog and for himself and his mum.

My eldest daughter, Mary, 20 something, has been trying her hand at curries and reckons they just aren't turning out right. Now, I could just give her some of my reasonably fool proof recipes, but it occurs to me it would be much more fun and involving and skills-transferring to have her come over one afternoon/night and together we will make a meal. Sounds obvious, really. That's how I learned to make a Sri Lankan Christmas Cake from my gran and mum. That's how I learned to make curries, watching my father and asking questions.

So, over to you, I'd love to hear from anyone about how they help their kids learn about foodways. The more of this we share, the more we can move away from making food some high media frennzied high stress high bullshit activity, one which will give our kids a love of food and all of its fascinating ways.