If you haven't seen this 18 minute video yet, please do take a look:
It is Jamie Oliver, a famous chef, talking about teaching children about food. It is amusing, because Jamie Oliver is amusing, but it is also very disturbing. Did I hear him right, people who are three generations away from homecooking? Three generations? The amount of lost knowledge is astounding. And the scene where the children can not identify one vegetable haunts me every day, although I saw this about a week ago.
While it is great that Michelle Obama has taken up childhood obesity and teaching good nutrition as a cause, information and teaching must happen at home or as close to home as possible. This isn't just a problem among poor people in rural West Virginia, it is everywhere. I see it among Lucy's chess friends in Harlem and among our neighbors in Gillams and Sunnyside.
Of course it isn't just about lost knowledge about how to feed ourselves so that we may be healthy and functional, it is about sharing with our children how growing, preparing and eating food together is love.
Go out and share the love!
my DD has questionable taste in men.
ReplyDeletethe current boyfriend was surprised by home made bread.
BF: i didn't know you owned a bread maker.
DD: I don't.
BF: But how can you make bread at home with out a machine?
(you are wise to home school--this paragon is a NYC public school teacher!)
a further comment for BF: Bread is made in factories.. i didn't know you could make bread at home.
sad, sad. (of course DD grew up with home made bread--and knows better!