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Food education for children
I love co-incidences. They appear magical,
though of course they are not. I recently had a triple one, and all
were to do with the education of our children. Two were about food and
are the subject of this page. The third concerned reviving children’s
natural instincts to make and mend things, and sometimes break them.
That is elsewhere on this site on the Repairs page.
The diets of many people are becoming poor and even dangerous for
health. As a result people are becoming unhealthily fat and have
constipation and poor gut bugs resulting in a rise in cancer and other
diseases. Elsewhere in this site I suggest that a good start is to find
out about the average American diet and then do the opposite. How do we
start to correct this? With our children of course.
Teaching in the womb
On BBC radio on 13th February 2025 I heard a news item about a study
led by Beyza Ustun-Elayan at Durham University in England to discover
why many children dislike vegetables and even fruit. It followed on
from their 2022 research using ultrasound to observe how foetuses react
to swallowed flavours. The new study found that new-born babies liked
the smell of foods to which they were exposed in the womb. In the
amniotic fluid the growing baby receives some of the flavour and smell
of the food that the mother eats and, after birth, this influences what
they like, or don’t.
The tests involved giving one group of 32 week pregnant women lots of
carrots and another lots of kale. When exposing the new-born babies to
the same smells they showed a ‘laughter-face’ to those they had smelt
in utero and a ‘cry-face’ to those they had not. But what should we do
if the mothers themselves dislike such things? Mothers were also given
capsules containing the flavours and smells of these foods and the
study found the same effect. There are more details in the journal
Appetite, https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/appetite.
https://studyfinds.org/babies-remember-what-mom-ate-picky-eating/
(sorry about the ‘mom’)
TastEd
Within a day of the radio programme, I learned about a charity,
registered in England, Wales and Scotland, that encourages
children to learn about, and enjoy eating, fresh fruit and vegetables.
This is cleverly called TastEd and is used in over 1300 schools. The
idea came from Bee Wilson and Abby Scott. As they say, ‘We are living
through an unprecedented crisis in child health across the world,
largely caused by the food that children eat.’ The staff have created a
‘tool for teachers’ that includes a full scheme of work, tailored to
the National Curriculum, that gives children a taste for healthy food
through all of their five senses.
The lessons are planned for reception through to year 6 classes. It
enables teachers, even those who might not have any knowledge of the
subject, to run practical classes using raw vegetables and fruit,
sometimes provided free by local supermarkets. Parents can use the
lessons at home as well, at virtually zero cost. Everything is laid out
on the website at https://www.tasteeducation.com/ . It is a truly
brilliant idea. Well done to all who are involved. If you have
small children, why not find out if their school uses the scheme.
So why not take a look? Who knows, you might learn to love more foods
as well. I’m not sure whether it would work with me and mushrooms
though! Shudder!
You can contact them on info@tasteeducation.com and the website invites
feedback.
I signed up for the newsletter and got an email today asking for
people who know primary school teachers to promote the idea to
them and announcing training dates.
Last edit 14 May 2025
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