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Every year British Food Fortnight challenges schools to use the national food promotion event as an opportunity to teach young people about food: about the diverse and delicious range of food available, the benefits of healthy eating and about the pleasures of eating quality, fresh, seasonal and regionally distinct produce.
Hundreds of schools – Primary, Secondary and Special Needs schools - take part every year. They invite chefs into the classroom to give cooking lessons, visit farms and allotments and tour local butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers as they take up the challenge to include food and cookery within their curriculum teaching during the Fortnight.
For secondary schools faced with the countdown to compulsory food technology in 2011 the national food celebrations are a fun way to get ahead of the game and launch cookery activities in your school. For primary schools it is ideal for helping you to make sure that food stays on your curriculum which is the best way of guaranteeing the healthy well-being of your pupils.
Every year we set schools a different challenge. For example:
- to incorporate food and cookery throughout their curriculum teaching (not just in food technology!)
- to design and cook a meal using the minimum number of food miles
- to use British seasonal food to cook a meal containing a healthy balance of the food groups the body needs and at least two portions that count towards our 5 A DAY.
Watch this space for this year's challenge! Details will be announced in April.
There are lots of 'Top tips' to inspire schools in the 'Putting the Ooo back into food' Resource packs above. Plus examples of how schools have taken part in previous years. There are also masses of resources on this page to help you. And for great tips on 5 A DAY visit www.nhs.uk/5aday.
The most imaginative and innovative schools taking part in British Food Fortnight each year have been rewarded with class sets of cooking equipment so that they are fully equipped to teach pupils how to cook long term. 245 schools in the UK have been provided with cooking equipment as a result!
Example: Hawarden High School’s Winning Entry
Hawarden High School in Flintshire won British Food Fortnight's School Challenge when schools were challenged to design and cook a meal using the minimum number of food miles.
Years 10 and 11 of Hawarden High School in Flintshire designed and cooked a meal that cut food miles by 95%. They commenced the Challenge by making a selection of traditional British dishes using ingredients that had either been donated by the school community or that they had picked in the school grounds. From these, they decided their menu: Indian-style Pigeon & Lamb Kebabs served with an authentic, home-made flatbread and a drizzle of seasonal relish; Delicious Baked Codling served on a golden brown potato rosti, finished with a seasonal salad garnish; Succulent Buffalo Pie, made with the finest North Wales Buffalo, slow roasted in a moist bitter ale and topped with the flakiest pastry, served with winter roasted vegetables; and Apple Up-side-down Cake served with lashings of homemade honey ice-cream and a gorgeous blackberry coulis.
Initially the pupils calculated the number of food miles for this meal to be over 37,000! With a little careful substitution and modification of ingredients they managed to cut the miles by 95%! For example, they replaced vanilla with local honey in their ice cream, used local gooseberries in place of an orange in the main course, and exchanged cane sugar for home produced beet sugar. Pupils even made their own Welsh Acorn Coffee, using acorns that they had collected, with which to finish off the meal! As an experiment, this coffee was also used to make a coffee cake. |
