Good nutrition is another pillar of development, not only because food is the most basic human need. Without proper nutrition, health is impossible. The amount and kinds of foods people eat, and their nutritional quality and safety, have direct effects on people's health and well-being, and hence on their ability to act to improve their own lives. Nutrition and education are closely interlinked. Schools focus on increasing students' knowledge about what is meant by good nutrition, with less emphasis on influencing students' motivation, attitudes, and eating behaviors. Good nutrition during childhood is important for healthy growth and development: in addition to affecting physical growth and maturation, a child's nutritional status also influences a number of factors that are central to the child's educational achievements - good health and nutrition increase the child's attention span, its learning capacity, and its ability to fully engage in educational experiences. Studies have shown that good health and nutritional status also enhance school enrolment, attendance and retention.Schools are the natural development zone for nutrition education, one of the main social contexts in which lifestyles are developed as 1.they reach most children, for a number of years, on a regular basis, 2.they have qualified personnel to teach and guide, 3.they reach children at a critical age, when eating habits and attitudes are being established and 4.they provide opportunities to practise healthy eating and food safety in school feeding programmes, and through the sale of food on their premises.When one-third of European students at schools are overweight or obese, and are in danger of a poorer quality of life, it's clear that food education is too important to leave to the Food Industry of processed/junk food and snacks. Just as we expect our schools to work hard when it comes to teaching geography, maths, physical education, and history, we should expect schools to teach students about food:where it comes from and how it affects our bodies and our health and how we can improve both.So, the motivation for this project is to try to put an end to food ignorance at schools. Two big facts on teenager students are ignored in education today: 1. How and what they eat at school, snacks, comfort food (chocolate, which is almost always falsely 'guilty' of much although it is the only food universally consumed by everyone) 2. the absence of a subject on Nutrition in almost all curricula as a separate lesson, although there used to be one in older times in some countries. Moreover, as 2018 is the Year of intangible European Cultural Heritage and Food is the most common commodity for any human and a basic feature of any cultural heritage, we need to put food education back in European schools because we value our students and their prospects for long, healthy, and happy lives; we want them to learn from the past in order to look forward to a better future. |