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The Food Education Platform will continue to grow in 2022
The Food Education Platform, which provides various learning modules including taste classes for 75% of primary schools, will continue to develop its food education programme to keep up with the times. Two new partners are joining from 1 January 2022; Lidl Nederland and Boerderijeducatie (Farm Education) Nederland.
The Food Education Platform is a public-private partnership in which Wageningen University & Research (WUR) works together with the business community, government, education and social organisations to provide objective information and education on food and nutrition to children. The programme focusses on eating, tasting, feeling, smelling and seeing food. Children learn where their food comes from and that healthy food is also tasty food.
As part of this curriculum, Wageningen University & Research provides taste classes and taste missions in cooperation with, among others, the Dutch Nutrition Centre, Jong Leren Eten (teaching the youth about healthy food), the Gezonde School (healthy diets for school children) and various businesses. More than 100 regional partners also participate, including chefs, dieticians, farmers and partners in the green education sector.
Latest developments: Chef in the Classroom, more field trips and a home portal for young people
The inclusion of these new partners will lead to an additional impulse for two projects in the platform. Lidl Netherlands will provide support to the national Chef in the Classroom event with grocery parcels. Chef in the Classroom brings chefs from all over the Netherlands into the classroom to cook with pupils with a view to discovering new tastes and products. Boerderijeducatie Nederland will be involved in further expanding the range of excursions and learning by doing for schools with the focus on the quality of the field trips, the combination with education and looking out for field trips.
The current Food Education Platform partners will also be working towards the common goal in 2022 of making children between the ages of four and 12 more food aware. One of the latest plans is to develop a home portal where young people can go to work themselves in learning about food, possibly along with their parents.
Providing objective education together with industry
Wageningen University & Research develops all the teaching materials in this Public Private Partnership. An independent Supervisory Board and Review Committee monitor policy and the independence and content of the teaching materials. All the members are committed to this code of conduct, committing to the quality standards and the provision of objective, unambiguous and non-branded communication about food education activities. The teaching material deals exclusively with the food pyramid and avoids promoting any products or brands. Businesses support the partnership financially and also contribute ideas, access to their networks and non-branded materials for schools.