“Food literacy offers young people like you the opportunity to increase your pleasure and enjoyment of food,” said Sarah Elton, the keynote speaker at Centre Wellington District High School’s Good Food for All conference on April 27.
“So learning how to cook is this creative act that provides you with a tool to express yourselves because, after all, food culture is, well, who we are. Food is fundamental to our identity.”
Elton is a journalist and best-selling author of various nutrition-based books, the most recent of which (and the reason she was asked to attend as the keynote speaker) being Starting from Scratch: What You Need to Know About Food And Cooking, which is aimed at young people.
On April 27, representatives from high schools in the Upper Grand District School Board, as well as area elementary schools, participated in the first ever Good Food for All conference at the Centre Wellington Community Sportsplex.
The conference aimed to show students how the food they choose impacts them, said Diane Ballantyne, CWDHS teacher and an event organizer.
“The purpose of this conference is to try and bring in 15 different schools from across the board with approximately 21 kids from each school so that those kids can go back and try to help shape food cultures at their schools,” she explained.
And to tell the students, “Your food choices affect your ability to succeed in your day and here are some options for you to consider.”
The event started because CWDHS was awarded the Healthy Eating in Secondary Schools grant through the Ministry of Education.
“The purpose of the grant is to try to help educate students about how the foods they choose to consume affect their ability to perform in school and athletically and regulating emotions,” Ballantyne said.
Her Grade 12 “challenge and change” class surveyed a variety of classes at different age levels to see just what students knew about their food.
“Based on the survey results it was clear that there was a real need to help kids understand what was going on with the choices that they were making,” Ballantyne said. “What we wanted to look at was … the types of food that you end up choosing and so we’re hoping that through providing [students] with many different choices of easy to make healthy options that we can try to counter balance the sugar- and preservative-laden foods that are available out there.”
Elton took students through an hour-long presentation teaching them about their food. One of her big focuses was on food literacy.
“It means understanding the impact of the food you choose to eat on your health, on your community and on the world around you, also on the environment and the biosphere,” Elton said.
She said the positive benefits of young people cooking could last their entire lives.
The Children’s Food Trust, a British organization, did a study looking at young people and food.
“They found in a recent study that children who cook before the age of eight are 50 per cent more likely to cook when they grow up,” Elton said. “So cooking when you’re young, it builds you skills for later in life and sets you up for making healthier choices.”
Students, who were treated to a bag lunch prepared by the Food School at CWDHS, chose from 10 workshops, all with a nutrition focus.
