For your amusement...

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There's sex education, why not food education?

September 22, 2007
Cameron Smith
There's a good reason why environmentalists should be interested in  
what children and teenagers eat. It has everything to do with their  
understanding and respect - for themselves, and ultimately for nature.

Unfortunately, as Debbie Field, executive director of FoodShare in  
Toronto, points out, Canada is facing a crisis with so many young  
people who are overfed and undernourished, who are uninformed and  
unconcerned.

As in other rich countries, malnutrition is rampant, rivalling that  
in poor countries where lack of food is the problem. Here, the  
problem is a superabundance of one type of food, rich in  
carbohydrates (which contain sugars), fats, and proteins, and low in  
vitamins and minerals. It has become the basic diet for many Canadians.

It supplies energy, but lacking essential vitamins and minerals, it  
leaves them hungry. When more is consumed, excess energy is stored as  
fat. Consequently, in poor countries, the undernourished are thin and  
hungry; here, they are often fat and hungry.

For the first time in human history, says the World Health  
Organization, the number of overweight people is about the same as  
underweight - about 1.1 billion each. UNICEF (the United Nations  
Children's Fund) reports that vitamin and mineral deficiencies are  
responsible for impairing hundreds of millions of young minds,  
lowering national IQ levels, compromising immune systems and  
producing serious birth defects.

The Canadian Academy of Health Sciences reports that one of every six  
Canadian youngsters aged 6 to 12 years is clinically obese and one in  
three is overweight. And Statistics Canada notes that 70 per cent of  
children and 50 per cent of adults don't eat the minimum amount of  
fruits and vegetables recommended.

Yet vegetables, fruits, and grains are what contain vitamins and  
minerals. Vitamins are created by plants in minute quantities through  
photosynthesis and are essential to regulate body functions, acting  
much like hormones. Minerals are taken up by plants from the soil,  
again in minute quantities, and help build cells, bones, teeth and  
ligaments, as well as support muscle control and trigger the action  
of vitamins.

The only way people can get vitamins and minerals is to eat them. So,  
FoodShare is mounting a campaign to include food literacy in the  
curriculum for elementary and secondary schools.

And why not, asks Debbie Field? Eating, like sex, is a basic  
psychological drive.

"We teach sex education," she says. "We should be teaching food  
education."

As a start, FoodShare is inviting teachers to bring students for  
cooking classes at its new location in the former Ursula Franklin  
High School on Croatia St., near Dufferin and Bloor Sts.

On the day I dropped by, 24 students from Grades 9 to 12 were there  
from the School for Experiential Learning in Etobicoke. I had some  
soup they made and it was delicious. However, with a few declaring  
that they never eat vegetables, I began to see the size of the  
challenge FoodShare is facing.

Nevertheless, the possibilities are exciting.

Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynne has already promised that  
environmental issues will be integrated into the curriculum. By  
adding food, and linking it to science subjects already taught,  
students could get an appreciation of the issues surrounding food,  
from soil fertility and germination, through photosynthesis and  
transpiration, and then to energy inputs, beneficial insects,  
microbial action, digestive tracts, and finally human health.

It could promote respect for living things in all their intricacy,  
including respect for one's own body - and this would be a very good  
thing.


Cameron Smith can be reached at [log in to unmask]

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/259215

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