Yesterday, millions of basic education students returned to the classroom. The new school year undoubtedly awakens expectations that, over time, turn into unmet educational needs for our children and adolescents. Among these, the urgent inclusion of food education stands out on the agenda.
I emphasize that this is not just about nutrition education, which is often confused with food education. Nutrition education has traditionally been seen as the means to make nutritional knowledge accessible: the correct diet, calories, the body's physiological needs, food groups, the nutritional properties of each group, calories, and how to achieve the mythical nutritional balance. Nutrition education often becomes, more than education, a food morality governed solely by biological principles. At best, some nutrition education plans and tools include aspects such as family mealtime and physical activity, which become the “mandatory” points to include, in an attempt to be a politically correct and inclusive strategy.
What is the problem with education that considers food solely as synonymous with nutrition? Firstly, it becomes more of a food morality that dictates, from a position where only the individual is held responsible for their health, what they should and should not do. Secondly, it is observed that educational approaches which simply transmit dietary information in the hope that this will change habits are completely ineffective. Knowing does not mean doing. Studies conducted with adolescents in Europe show that while teenagers know all the dietary information in their programs by heart and can pass their theoretical exams with good grades, this does not translate into a change in habits. Firstly, because school is not their only place of socialization; family is also part of their primary social environment. This does not mean that if they come from families with food problems, they are doomed for life. What happens is that, especially at these ages, adolescents prioritize other options in practice, since their priority is not food morality, but rather social occasions that allow them to feel they belong to something.
The traditional discourse of nutrition is based on a morality about food that seems to grant moral superiority to those who supposedly take perfect care of their diet, according to contradictory dietary principles. Food education not only advocates for health, but also provides students with life skills and tools. Food education considers diversity, heritage, and regional and global cultural richness; it promotes initiatives to encourage a less problematic relationship between food and body image, as well as between food and pleasure through sensory tastings, awakening the senses, developing culinary skills, among many other aspects.
A food education that redefines the pleasure we take in eating, sharing, our cultural and culinary wealth, openness to other cultures, and ecological awareness is fully inscribed in the development of comprehensive life skills, and consequently in health and well-being. Food morality does not work. As classes resume, if the school does not promote it, let us keep these aspects in mind as much as possible and promote them in our homes.
— This article was originally published in Spanish by Liliana Martínez Lomelí. Translation generated with AI from the original text.