Get Food Education in Every School

Here are The Creative Kitchen, we believe that hands-on cooking and essential food skills should be taught to every child and food education should be an integrated part of the school curriculum. So we’re thrilled that our friends Food Day and Jamie Oliver Food Foundation (USA) teamed up to create the national Get Food Education in Every School initiative, which raises awareness about the critical importance of food education in schools across America.

Food Day Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education program

Students taking part in the Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education program ‘A Recipe for Success’ (photo credit: founder Gracie Cavnar)

If every child had the opportunity to learn about, grow, and cook food and understand the implications of food waste on the wider community, we believe they’d have the knowledge and tools to lead healthier and more fulfilling lives. Studies show that:

The more children learn about food and nutrition, the more likely they are to eat fruit and veggies,
The more children cook and prep fresh food from scratch, the more likely they are to appreciate healthier and more varied ingredients, and
The more children plant and harvest fruits and veggies, the more motivated they’ll be to eat them also.

Providing our children with food education has never been more vitally important as it is today. One-third of children in the U.S. are overweight or obese and total health care costs attributable to obesity could reach up to $957 billion by 2030. At the same time, 17 million children in the US remain hungry. What’s more, as a result of obesity-related disease, children today are predicted to be the first to die at a younger age than their parents.

What can we do to reverse these trends? Schools, together with local communities and families, need to be at the heart of food education, to teach children about food, where it comes from and how it affects our bodies and therefore, to put the tools of prevention in the hands of children themselves.

Schools play an important role in helping shape the next generation and are responsible for teaching essential skills and knowledge, such as reading, writing, computer literacy, and mathematics. Cooking skills and food knowledge, however, are clearly not prioritized like these subjects or even considered to be essential skills.

Join us, Food Day, and Jamie Oliver Food Foundation (USA) in the essential mission of reversing this trend and creating a food literate society. Sign on to support and share your belief that food education should be available for every child, in every school in America!