WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — May 21, 2010 — Students in New York City are about to learn how their carrots and potatoes travel from the ground to their plates. This past Thursday,Mayor Michael Bloomberg and television personality Rachael Ray unveiled a series of new programs to promote healthy eating among the City’s youth. Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s leading farm animal protection organization, commends local governments who promote children’s access to fresh, healthy produce.

Sponsored by Rachael Ray and her Yum-o! organization, the new programs will connect the City’s students to existing community gardens or help them build gardens of their own. In addition to supplementing cafeteria food with fresh, healthy, locally-grown produce, the plan will encourage young New Yorkers to learn where their food comes from and encourage youth to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into their diet.

If you would like to speak with Farm Sanctuary’s Executive Director Allan Kornberg, please contact Meredith Turner at 646-369-6212 or mturner@farmsanctuary.org.

I am more and more convinced that Food might be a powerful vector for good in schools and that schools can equally help our food system.

I was talking to our DM of Education the other day and one of his hopes is to find a way to help parents engage better with school. We talked about Community Kitchens where parents might also go to school, cook the week's food, learn how to cook and eat differently, be close to their kids, form a support community. Such kitchens could source their food locally. Kids could learn to cook as well. Familes could reduce their food bill and eat better. School could as a result become part of many parents regular lives. A connection could be made. 

For most people do not know how to cook anymore. 

For knowing how to cook has been lost and has to come back if people are to be healthy. Worse, as we saw on Jamie Oliver, many don't even know what real food looks like or even what a potato is. Worse with no meal, there is no centre for family.

Making food important at school makes school the centre for reclaiming our health. After all school has become the centre of fast food and pop now. It is where children's habits are reinforced. Sound ridiculous? Well at my old school in England, Harrow, one of the poshest BOYS schools in the world - Cooking is now a compulsory one year course for ALL boys! Why? Because the school and the boys know that knowing how to cook is now a vital life skill - and its fun.

We have lost the habit of cooking and sharing food. We can make new habits.

We can also make school the catalyst for local food systems and as connectors for over worked, too busy, disconnected parents. School could become a safe place to build a network of support. To acquire mastery and to take control of the food of the family.

And by the way, kids that eat well learn better too.

What would this cost? My bet is that this is more about will than money. Let's start somewhere. Wouldn't it be great to find one school on PEI that we could try this out?

Below the fold - a Harrovian's view of Cooking Classes

Lots of Harrovians are learning to cook.

Most say that they are getting into this simply because it is fun, but other reasons are pretty obvious, too. Cooking is a vital life skill if you want to live well. You can bet that when they get to university, Harrovians, who have been used to good food at home and at school, will not want to be abandoned to live on dry canteen chips and over-priced take-aways. The solution is to gain confidence to prepare your own food at home. The kind of facilities used in the new cooking suite in the Biology Schools should be available, even in the most basic hall of residence or student basement.

Cooking, surely, too, is a social skill which is increasingly prized in society at large. Won’t you be better able to impress your girl friends with an intimate supper “in”, rather than a communal meal “out”. Coming across as a new man, with wide-ranging skills and interests, might counter the ignorance and prejudice certain Harrovians have reported at the name of their alma mater.

Maybe, too, some of those having their skills expanded in cookery classes fancy the idea of making their first million like Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal or Jamie Oliver, though Mrs Custos would not put up with Ramsay-like language and has yet to find any takers for snail porridge. Furthermore, it is unlikely any Harrovian want to adopt the Mockney tones of Mr Oliver.

Cookery is a part of the Remove Skills sessions on Wednesday afternoons, and Sixth Form House groups meet on Fridays and Fifth Forms on Tuesdays. However, Mrs Lunt-Sincock emphasises that she has time for others if you want to approach her to try to find a suitable time. What you cook can be decided to some extent by the group, and although there are some good, reliable, introductory recipes to start with, your imagination is the limit once you have got confidence – though safety first is always the mantra.

It has been suggested that this positive attitude to a domestic skill from so many Harrovians is another advantage of attending an all-boys school. There is no image of cookery as “only for girls”. In this world of equality and opportunity, what could be more encouraging than an activity that can bring a lifetime of enjoyment? Isn’t that what school is for?