As obesity rates rise in the United Kingdom among youth, there is a real effort being made to try and promote healthy eating before these rates get out of control. A combination of government programs, local health bodies, television cooking shows and cooking magazines are getting involved in the promotion of healthy food and the education in how to cook a balanced diet. One fairly recent trend is for schools to get involved in the promotion of healthy recipes (Rezepte), thanks mostly to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and his cooking bus project. This is especially important in the UK and other European nations, as a lot of kids eat their lunch time meal at the school cafeteria – which therefore makes up a large proportion of their daily nutritional intake.
Jamie Oliver and his TV program on healthy school eating should definitely be congratulated for bringing public awareness to the issues surrounding the lack of healthy food in schools. However, he was picking up on a wider consciousness relating to healthy eating practices and recipes that has been growing steadily in the last few years. As fast food and microwave ovens have become more and more acceptable as a large part of many people’s diets, there has also been a healthy eating backlash that has attempted to put good food back on the agenda. A rising interest in international cuisine and gourmet cooking has helped to open peoples’ minds to the issue of food and our relationship to it. This interest has been sustained by TV programs and a cooking magazine (Kochmagazin) culture that seems to interest more and more people every year.
Our learning at school is a big part of what defines our adult lives, however, often it is the practical knowledge of things like cooking that are left out of the curriculum. People are what they eat in a very real sense, as the nutrition we intake goes to directly fueling our bodies growth and repair. This is especially important in the school years, when children are going through so much growth and so many physical changes. Along with the traditional school subjects of maths, language, science and humanities, it it vital that students have both a knowledge of nutrition and the cooking skills to be able to make their own healthy food.
There is little as important as learning how to cook and eat a healthy and balanced diet, and nowhere better than school to learn how to do it. Jamie Oliver’s healthy eating programs have given people both young and old the awareness of just how important food and nutrition are to young people. Food industry publications such as cooking magazines and TV shows have also caught on to the healthy eating craze. With teachers and education bodies now also picking up on this tide of awareness relating to healthy eating – as long as they all continue – the nutritional future of school age kids is looking better than it has in a very long time.