For your amusement...
****
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
-------------------
Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask]
To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header -- to [log in to unmask]
SIGNOFF SDOH
DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU.
To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header.
SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname
To post a message to all 1200+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask]
Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant.
For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask]
To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask]
SET SDOH DIGEST
To view the SDOH archives, go to: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html
|