How exploring food in school can help kids, with Jason O’Rourke – Food For Kids Podcast episode 87

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. Over the year, you'll probably have picked up that the main focus of my products and content is on building children's exposure to food without any pressure to eat. And we've had several episodes focusing on how to do that in your own home and with your own kids. But today I want to explore what happens when we take that work into a group setting. So I was very happy to speak to Jason O'Rourke, who is a primary head teacher and the founder of a charity called TastEd that gets food education into schools with that same low pressure exploration approach. TastEd has two main rules. No one has to like the foods and no one has to try them. It's all about exploration, confidence and trust.

As parents, we try our best to help our individual child to master the things that they need for their own life. But education professionals like teachers also have to take into account more population-wide systemic issues so that they can make sure that they're helping their whole school community to thrive. Before we started recording, Jason talked about some of the societal trends he's seen over time and in particular the prevalence of poor quality foods in many children's diets and how this can contribute to poorer health outcomes for many children. Good education professionals who see these statistics always want to do something to mitigate any harms to children. And this desire to give children an opportunity to open up their food world was the inspiration behind TastEd.

Jason is a nationally recognised expert in food education and school food policy, as well as being an enthusiastic ambassador for the food projects in his own school, Washingborough Academy. So I thought he'd be the perfect person to talk to about how group-based exploration of foods can help children. So here's that interview.

Joanne Roach (02:02)

Your programme, TastEd, has helped children in lots of schools to explore food using their senses. Why do you think this approach helps children even when they don't actually end up eating or liking the taste of the foods?

Jason (02:13)

Food of course is something that pervades all of our lives. It's something that hopefully we do three times a day and by exposing children to healthy food we're one step further along that line to giving them a healthier lifestyle, bigger choices. And what TastEd does, it's a very, very simple programme that exposes those children to fruit and vegetables in all shapes and forms. And as you said at beginning, it doesn't force the children to eat it, to actually consume it. That's not one of the things we want. We want them to see things. We want them to hear fruit and vegetables. We want them to touch them, we want them to smell them, then become familiar with them. So it's not something that they are scared of.

And schools are a great conduit for that because if a child doesn't get exposed to it at home for whatever reason, parents may not like that food, it may be an economic decision that they can't really afford some of those foods and not know that the children will eat them. Well, if we can do that in schools and expose them to it, then they start to think, I quite like that and I'd like a little bit more of that. So that's what TastEd aims to do. As you said at the beginning, the two rules of TastEd are that no one has to like and no one has to try. But I think that exposure there gives children the agency to try and do those things.

Joanne Roach (03:29)

And you do that by getting children to explore a food by looking at it, by touching it, by smelling it, tasting it, that kind of thing?

Jason (03:36)

Yeah, there's a set programme of activities and lesson plans for teachers and LSAs. So we have the actual lesson plan. We have a PowerPoint that goes with it as well. So it's hand-holding for practitioners, adult practitioners that may not have training in food education. We don't do it at higher education level or teacher training, unfortunately. So it's a programme that guides the teacher and obviously the children then into the exposure of it.

So we may have one to do with citrus fruits. And so that is having, in the carpet with the children around it, lemons and limes and tangerines and oranges and satsumas and looking at those different types of citrus fruits describing them, why are they different? The different shapes, the different colours and then of course the smell and of course citrus is great for that and the different types of smells you get from those different types of citrus fruits and of course you if think about a grapefruit, a big grapefruit compared to a tangerine or something and children get excited about that concept and having them all in one area as well. And then you go on to exploring the senses and the last lesson tends to be one of a taste lesson. Would you like to have a try of this food? And because the children have over that number of weeks have been exposed to that, become familiar with it, is not such a big thing to actually try that. And of course you've then added ingredient, as it were, of other children trying that food. And a child who may not have tried it might look at their friend trying it and think, oh I want to have a go at that, I don't want to be left out. And they try and realise that they really like it. And of course the relationship between the adult in the school and the relationship you have at home is different as well. So you have that kind of double whammy there of children thinking yeah I might have a go at this.

Joanne Roach (05:00)

You're also a primary head teacher. So over the course of doing this kind of work, what changes have you seen in the children that come through your school when it comes to eating or engaging with food?

Jason (05:23)

I think it's more confidence. It's confidence in knowing their own likes and dislikes. Confidence in the fact that they can say, I don't actually like something, but have a reason why they don't like it. Not just because they haven't tried it, but I have tried that and actually it's not to my taste. But also the interest in everything to do with food.

We start off TastEd in the first week of the children coming into nursery, and they have a weekly lesson on this and it goes through to foundation stage two / reception and then year one and year two. And in those four years those children are immersed in the sensory aspect of food. And so they see the joy and the pleasure of what food can bring us. It then moves on to when we're in our key stage two, our seven to eleven year olds, we expand it even further to food in the environment that they're in and look at things like free trade and look at the growing aspect of things. We have a big 300 meter squared organic kitchen garden, we have polytunnels, we have beehives, we have organic orchards. And so they then see the impact that food has on society in general and also about their health and their wellbeing.

We work with another organization about the gut health as well saying, well, it's great that you're eating this food and we say it's healthy, but why is it healthy? What is the reason it's healthy? What is it doing to your body? So it just expands and expands and expands, and the children just get excited about it. And they're learning, and they don't know they're learning, and with any school, that's the dark arts, isn't it, really, which is the magic bullet when you've got those type of situations going on. And it is really, really good fun. The children love it, and the teachers love it as well.

Joanne Roach (06:47)

That's fantastic. So if parents are listening at home and their school doesn't do something like this, but they want to try and apply some of this approach at home, where would you tell them to start?

Jason (07:08)

I’d go to the Tasteducation.com website, okay, because during lockdown, of course, very few children were in schools, and we created lessons for parents to do at home. So that we have a specific bank of lessons for you to try at home. But of course you can try the lessons that we're doing in classrooms at home as well.

And we have quite a lot of schools that started off with parents saying well it would be great if you know maybe I could do something after school with some children, a group of children. So I think it's looking at the resources we have on our website and then trying it with your own children, seeing the great fun that you can have with that and actually seeing their food choices and their food preferences change before your very eyes.

It's a magical thing, it really is. And for a child to put a vegetable, a healthy fruit in their mouth for the first time is quite a special experience for an adult to do that. You know, don't get that sense of awe and wonder when you're teaching fractions or frontal adverbials, but you do when a child is ingesting something.

We have some children when we first started the programme that had never tasted a pear before or ever held an onion before and to actually be a practitioner, a teacher or an LSA and watching that experience is what you go into teaching for to make sure the children are having really good experiences and they're gaining knowledge of aspects of their own life.

Joanne Roach (08:26)

Yeah, I can appreciate that. I have these activity boxes that I sent out and some of the nicest moments is when I get feedback from parents that a child has tried something or engaged with something. And I've got one pinned up on my wall that's got, he actually bit a radish! That was like, that was the whole sentence she sent was he actually bit a radish. But that was such a huge triumph for that parent.

Jason (08:39)

Yeah, it is. as I said, it's a magical thing to see it, you know, to have that. It's like, you know, as a parent hearing your child's first words, you know, having, you remember that moment also, you know, as a parent, you're wanting your child to be really healthy. It is the main thing. And if you are then trying to expose them to good food, fresh food, and they haven’t had that experience before and they start to eat it, you can just look at that and it just gives you an incredible feeling. It really does as a parent.

Joanne Roach (09:09)

If listeners are thinking about how this approach could possibly apply in their local school or their local preschool, what can they do to help?

Jason (09:19)

It's making teachers aware of it, senior leaders aware of it. I think also it's the practical aspects. As a head teacher myself, you come every day, you get issues that come across your desk and the best thing you can ever give to a head teacher is an issue and then the solution to it as well.   

When I do talks about TastEd and food education in general and people say to me, I've got a really busy curriculum, how do we fit this in? Teachers have something called PPA time, where they're planning and preparing and they're doing all their assessments and everything. And what we have in our school is our learning support assistants, they support the learning that goes on in the classroom, that the teachers are planning. This is a fantastic thing for learning support assistants to work on because they become the champions of it. It's their thing.  Ours absolutely love it. It's the highlight of their week. So if you've got a session that you can put aside, you know 45 minutes, where one of your LSAs can deliver this lesson, teachers may want to do it but of course there's all the other things that teachers are doing. But get your champions from other areas of the school and they will run with it and absolutely you know flourish with it.

Joanne Roach (10:23)

What's the biggest thing you've learned from all the years of doing this kind of food education work?

Jason (10:29)

I think it's how satisfying it is and think it also it comes down to the core of why you go into education. I've been in education a long time, you know, over 30 years and there are lots of things that come in and out of education, lots of white papers, lots of initiatives that are brought in by governments and all types of situations that come across your desk and you run with them and then something else takes over. What you need to look at is what you went in there for. What I went in there for, and I think every Head will say this, is to make children's lives better. Children you've got in your school, you want them to be really well-educated, healthy individuals by the time they leave the school.  If we look at, as we come back to the beginning of the podcast, when we look at the health outcomes, you want to put your hand on your heart and think, what I've given those children, the education I've given those children, the knowledge I've given those children, the experiences I've given those children, has the potential to really improve their life and their life chances.

And food education is one of those rare things that can do that because it's something that a child will do every day. It's something that they have knowledge of when they come into your school. They have knowledge of food, they eat it. And when they leave school, they'll have knowledge of it. Can you improve that knowledge and advance it? And tell them that what you're putting in your body makes a massive difference to what you can produce yourself, you know physically wise, academically wise, all these type of things. That is the core of what you're doing and your health and wellbeing is so vitally important. If we can sort that out, everything else layers on top of it.

Joanne Roach (12:06)

I love Jason's enthusiasm for the seemingly ordinary, but actually very important, everyday interactions with food that he witnesses in his school and in TastEd projects. I absolutely agree that seeing a child explore a new food and build their confidence is one of the most magical things.

Over the years working in schools and daycare settings, I've also seen firsthand just how much influence other children or a trusted adult in school can have on children's confidence and their willingness to explore foods. Obviously for a small number of children with particular needs, there may be a need to explore more at home, but as Jason said, for very many children, a classroom gives them a chance to be more curious and brave and to build up their enthusiasm in a group.

If you think this might be a great idea for your child's school or for a local school or preschool, please do go visit the TastEd website. I'll put links in the show notes to the website as well as to the parents' downloads that Jason mentioned. So if you want to start with some at-home exploration, there are activities for all primary age groups and involving all the senses. So do go check those out.

I hope that's fired you up to try some exploration with your kids. And don't forget that the monthly seasonal food episodes on here also give lots of suggestions for small two-minute ways to expose your kids to foods in the kitchen.

I'll be back on Monday with another episode, so I hope to see you then, and in the meantime, happy eating!

00:00 Introduction

02:01 Why exploring food in group settings is important

03:29 How TastEd works with senses

05:11 How food exploration helps over time

06:57 How parents can do food exploration at home

09:10 How to get your local school or group setting involved

10:23 Biggest takeaways from years of food education

12:05 Summary and outro