A Practical Guide to Healthy Cooking in the Primary School

Understanding Nutritious Food for a Balanced Diet and Healthy Body

Maureen Glynn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367753726
• eBook ISBN: 9781000512144
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

As part of the national curriculum, cooking provides children with a variety of skills, from learning the science behind where food comes from to what good health is and understanding how ingredients can be turned into something tasty to eat.

Packed full of practical advice, colourful recipes, and nutritional guidance, this book will provide:

• Guidance to teach children a range of cooking skills, using a variety of ingredients from varying sources.
• An understanding as to where our food comes from; seasonal and all-year-round produce; how food is grown and transported to our shops and markets.
• The basic skills to make food safe, nutritious, and palatable to eat.
• Links to STEM, PSHE, and D&T primary school curriculum subjects.

Ideal for group work for any primary classroom that has access to a school kitchen, either in mainstream primary or special school settings, this book offers teachers, parents, and other practitioners a useful, photocopiable resource for delivering practical and hands-on lessons with scientific grounding.

With clear, easy to read, step-by-step, written, and illustrated recipes, this book provides all of the information needed to enable children, with supervision, to prepare and make tasty food, to share with family and friends, particularly on social and special occasions.

Part 1 Why teach cooking in primary schools?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003162254-2

Rationale

Seasonal food

Shopping

Food essential for good health and growth

Allergies, food intolerances, and allergens

Coeliac disease

Egg substitution

Alternative diets

Sweet foods and obesity

Food essential for mental health and wellbeing

Food to avoid to lose weight and calories

Links to other KS2 curriculum subjects

Health and safety rules

Rationale

In 2013, the high rate of obesity in children leaving primary school in Year 6, estimated to be 20%, prompted serious concerns for their future health and lifestyle choices around food.

Clearly, in order to improve healthy choices, children need to learn about what foods are nutritionally good for them and what is less good.

A diet high in processed food, hidden fats, salt, sugar, additives, preservatives, and colouring is definitely not desirable.

Those foods mask the true flavour, taste, and texture of fresh nutritious food.

Resulting from these serious concerns, experts in the field produced a School Food Plan. They advocated more nutritional food in school meals and proposed that primary school children should learn how to cook for themselves and others, in order to maintain a healthy diet that would continue for life.

The Department for Education (DfE) accepted and developed the School Food Plan in 2014.

Within the Design and Technology (D&T) National Curriculum Programme, it became mandatory for primary school children to learn Cooking, Healthy Eating, and Nutrition, at Key Stages 1–3, that is from 4–14 years old.

The Children’s Food Trust recommended at least 24 hours of tuition, at each key stage.

This useful website explains the DfE aims and goals:

www.theschoolrun.com.cooking-and-nutrition-in-primary-schools

Children should learn:

• How to cook various meals
• How to prepare food
• How to use equipment
• How fruit and vegetables are grown
• About shopping lists
• About hygiene, safety, and clearing up afterwards
• About testing and tasting food

Alarming statistics about obesity in schoolchildren linked to social deprivation are shown on this website:

https://www.nutrition.org.uk/nutritioninthenews/schoolchildren/update.html

Seasonal food

The recipe you choose to follow, at any time, may include plenty of seasonal fresh produce or just a small amount. It is good to know what is available and at its best in the four seasons of the year.

This seasonal guide depicts which British fruit and vegetables are in season at any time of the year. You can download it as a poster.

https://www.countrysideonline.co.uk/back-british-farming/cook-and-eat/a-seasonal-guide-to-british-fruit-and-vegetables/

Shopping

For shopping lists and choice of recipe, this website provides a month-by-month guide as to what is best to eat, just as it is ready to harvest at that time.

https://www.hubbub.org.uk/eating-seasonally?

Buying direct from a farm shop or a vegetable box scheme is an option if you do not have space to grow your own. The food will be fresh, tasty, and nutritious.

It will have travelled fewer miles and will not be plastic wrapped.

If organically grown, no pesticides or inorganic fertilisers will have been used.

Where the food comes from

The farm shop, greengrocer, and open markets provide freshly picked fruit and vegetables. You can visit and shop in person, or order online from some.

Supermarket food has to travel some distance to the shops but many offer local fresh produce too. Home delivery will bring food ordered online to your door.

Click and Collect directly from the shop is another option.

Wholefood shops offer quality natural and organic produce, fruit, and vegetables, to suit a range of dietary needs. They tend to use less plastic packaging and sell larger quantities, if required.

You can shop in person or order online for a home delivery.

How fruit and vegetables are grown

This section looks at from where and how the fruit and vegetables, in the recipe, were grown and transported to our shops or home.

Some food is grown locally but some is flown in from around the world.

Organic farming aims to work with nature, rather than controlling it with harmful pesticides. Food is grown, using crop rotation, green manures and compost, biological pest control, and mechanical cultivation.

There are nine categories of vegetable

1. Cabbag...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1 Why teach cooking in primary schools?
• PART 2a Introduction
• PART 2b Recipes for starting skills
• PART 2c Recipes for improving skills
• PART 2d Recipes for adding more skills
• PART 2e Recipes for basic sauces/dressing
• PART 3 Supplementary information