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Growing & cooking veg on the curriculum

Photo:. unlikeschool.com

Photo:. unlikeschool.com

I am convinced that growing, cooking, and selling vegetables should be on the school curriculum. Every school should have an area of raised beds and fruit trees/bushes should be planted wherever there is space.

This would increase awareness of good fresh food and give kids a crucial life skill. That of how to provide healthy meals for a family with a small amount of money. And even make money from growing food.

This opinion has come from running a food project with a primary school in a deprived area of Leicester. With the help of a small lottery grant our team built a small allotment area and took over a primary school class every 2 weeks. The kids all joined in growing seeds, preparing the soil, planting out, weeding, then harvesting, cooking and selling the excess through the local shop via BigBarn’ Crop for the Shop Scheme.

I visited at harvest time with a BBC camera man and was inspired by how enthused the kids were about their food growing project. They all loved the harvesting and wanted to taste what they had grown. “1 hate carrots” soon became, “wow those are really tasty” when some freshly dug, washed, carrots were chopped up and shared out. See the video below:

How fantastic to see kids eating healthy, fresh, raw, veg and taking great care to make sure that, when cooked, their prize veg was as good as it could be. The teachers could then bring in some art for the labels used when selling the excess produce, and maths working out the right price per kilo for each product. Suddenly boring subjects become relevant!

I am sure that the NHS would save a fortune if we all ate more fresh veg. And instead of relying of food banks to feed the poor with ready meals, bags of vegetables could be distributed.

So food growing and selling should be part of the curriculum! If you agree, or disagree, please vote here or add a comment below.

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