Would you eat this? Of course you wouldn’t you don’t know what it is or where it came from. Yet we expect children to eat foods they know nothing about everyday.
Over two thirds of New Zealand children don’t eat the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables and around 80,000 of New Zealand Children are obese. In this post I’m going to open your minds to the rich and life changing journey of learning about our food and how this could be part of the health puzzle New Zealand is missing.
Before the industrialization of food every child in New Zealand ate what was grown, farmed, hunted, gathered or traded by their families. Most of this was local and seasonal. Children were digging around in the garden, tugging on the teats of a cow, rounding up the cattle or flock and chatting and bargaining a deal at the local market or store. My Grandmother who lived to 98 and a half years old remembers turning cream to make it into butter with her Grandmother. They were fully immersed in the wonderful world of their food, their nutrition, their lifeline, their environment and what it provided to nourish them. Their food was real and eaten close its natural state, they knew where it came from and how it got to their plate and they knew it’s value because they watched their families work very hard to grow, farm and trade for it. If they didn’t eat it they didn’t have other options readily available to them.
Today majority of New Zealand families have two parents working full time. Most of our food is purchased at the supermarket and ordering online options are now becoming more popular. Our food comes in plastic and cardboard packaging and is purchased using a magic plastic card. We consume lots of processed and packaged foods. Food is simply put in front of children to eat, they see little preparation and have no understanding of where it all comes from and how gardening and agriculture is linked to what they put in their mouths. Nutrition education is being taught through reading nutrition labels on the back of products. However in order to really understand food we need to know more than a few numbers.
Is this just a sign of the times? What are children eating in other parts of the world?
Throughout the world at lunchtime every school child sits down to eat their lunch. Some are perched under a banyan tree out in the fresh air, some are in a tent held up by a few wooden poles, some are in a new multi story complex, others are sitting in their floating classroom on a river. They all need lunch to grow and fuel their bodies and brains to learn. However the differences in what they eat and the education around it varies and illustrates the countries focus on health.
In Japan children and all staff members are provided a school lunch everyday. The children are heavily involved in the preparation of the meal and clean up. They are expected to learn and master these skills as much as reading, writing and maths and are even tested on it. The teachers sit and eat their lunch with their students and it is part of their learning. Their meals are healthy containing things like seaweed, cucumber pickles and miso soup. Parents are provided with a nutritional breakdown and source list of all the food served a month in advance. (What’s for Lunch, How School Children Eat Around the World – Hardcover page 6)
By AHLN, Lunch time [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Flickr
In France children sit down to a four course meal of smocked duck, fresh french bread with a mouth watering cheese from their traditional collection of around 300. They only serve water to drink at school and vending machines with sugary drinks and junk food have been banned since 2005. This meal is partly funded by the government with parents paying the rest based on their income. The meals are designed around education lessons which even feature such things as the anatomy of the tongue and how taste buds work. They have the lowest obesity rate in Europe. (What’s for Lunch, How School Children Eat Around the world – Hardcover page 10)
In Bangladesh they have some floating classrooms to overcome the challenges of the rainy season floods. Along with these classrooms they have floating gardens which are tended to by the parents who also get to share the produce. You can’t get much closer to your food source than that.
Here in New Zealand children dig into their lunchboxes and pop open a packet of crackers or bite into a sandwich usually filled with the old favourites of Marmite and cheese or jam. They have many packaged foods like fruit rolls, rice sticks, cookie times, Le snacks, yogurt tubes or tubs, tiny teddies, cheese wheels. Food education is not part our children’s day to day learning and we are not helping our children learn these valuable health skills enough.
Our children here in New Zealand are not growing up watching their parents farm and grow their food nor are they floating in a classroom on a river with their lunch growing on the floating garden behind them. Neither are they blessed with a strict orderly education system that tests them on their food and nutrition knowledge. They don’t come from a culture of culinary kings who eat a four course meal with silver wear for lunch….
They are however surrounded by thousands of acres of dairy farms where New Zealand farmers are getting up in the early hours of the morning to milk their cows, Growers and gardeners who spend their days planting, digging, weeding and caring for an array of fresh lush vegetables, Orchards full of fresh fruit that the rest of the world pay a high price to get their hands on, rivers and lakes filled with ells and fish, beaches and ocean filled with fresh seafood, people from many different cultures eating and celebrating our food in many different ways. Our children have so much food education available to them right here in our country it’s simply a matter of making it our priority and getting it into the schools and classrooms. Help us here at ‘What’s for Lunch?’ make this happen and sign up to our newsletter and programmes.
[CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Flickr 
