Food and health in educational contexts

Issues of food and health is present in education in many different ways, e.g. as subject content in many school subjects like home economics, physical education and health, science education and social studies, but also during school lunches. In Sweden governmentally financed ‘pedagogical lunches’ have been part of schools since the 1940-ies. Still, few teachers use these unique educational opportunities in their pedagogy regarding food. School lunches then becomes a way to get a nutritious meal, rather than learning in, about and through food. In this vein, previous research shows how school lunches has been treated as “a mere accident to the so-called real learning that takes place in the classroom” (Rowe and Rocha 2015, 483). The purpose of the project is to explore the relation between food and health as a pedagogical issue in a primary school profiled towards sustainable development. In the project researchers from education, sport science, biology, and culinary arts and meal science come together to investigate, for example; food and education for sustainable development, food and health as an integrated part of the whole school day, food and health and pupils with special needs, As well as the political, ethical and ecological consequences of eating meat.