Will better food knowledge improve health?

With the growing obesity crisis and ever increasing NHS budget will better food knowledge improve health? Or should we rely on sugar tax and media coverage like TV programmes to change people’s diet.

In the USA seven percent of adults think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, according to a survey commissioned  by the US Dairy Industry. That equates to around 16.4 million people.  However, commentators in the US say that given levels of ignorance about food, the figure could be even higher.  In the early 90s, a government survey found that one in five adults did not know hamburgers were made of beef.

In the UK we have heard survey results such as: Many children don’t realise that milk comes from cows and think potatoes grow on trees. So you have to wonder how the next generation will make the right food buying choices for a healthy diet and how in current trends continue how much money the NHS will need.

We grew these tasty raw, healthy, carrots!

To me the solution is obvious and we have mentioned it before: We must educate our kids about growing, cooking and eating healthy food by changing the curriculum. Every school should have a veg patch and every academic subject should have some kind of link to the veg patch, food, and cooking.

As most schools have a garden, common sense tells me that the overall cost will not be huge and in the long term any cost will be recovered many times over by massive savings in the NHS. The BigBarn Local Food Map can link schools with local farm shops, and producers, who would love to help the education process and win the next generation of customers.

Unfortunately politicians and business do not think far enough ahead. There is however nothing to stop progressive schools doing there own thing so if anyone would like to see what we have done and would like to copy, please click on this link and scroll down to the video. You could even send us a case study to add to the webpage so that other schools can follow.

BigBarn is all about sharing good-food practice and ideas and fits perfectly with our Community Interest status.