Poverty: Why are our children still hungry?

One of the schools I work at has a breakfast program, but it struggles to stay running and was recently saved by 'adopt a school' sponsorship. Our amazing youth worker prepares smoothies each morning for students who arrive hungry.

This article caught my eye, I wonder why Canada is the only G8 country without a program in place for our hungry students?

This morning, one in seven Canadian children went to school hungry. In the poorest communities that number can reach 50 per cent. Despite this, Canada is the only G8 country that does not have a national child nutrition program in our schools.

Many people don’t realize the extent of hunger in Canada. In a developed country like ours, it can be easily overlooked. Every month, nearly 900,000 Canadians receive assistance from food banks — 38 per cent of them are children and youth. These youth frequently go to school on an empty stomach.

READ MORE HERE.

This needs to change! This is not about money, it is about priorities. 

Teach children to cook... create healthy adults....

Want your children to grow up to be healthy adults? Teach them to cook....


I really enjoyed this article from the Province this week. It talks about involving children in grocery shopping and food preparation and cooking at a young age to help promote healthy eating and lifestyle. I find this to be very true, even more so as I teach Home Ec this year. Learning about the sugars in drinks and the Canada Food Guide and portions tat make a serving of vegetables for example. The article writes:

The occasional lucky person takes to cooking like a duck to water. But for most of us, it's a skill that needs to be taught. And the sooner children start to learn, the easier things tend to go.

"It has implications down the road," says Kate Comeau, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for Dietitians of Canada, the professional body that represents roughly 6,000 dietitians in this country.

"You can learn to cook as an adult ... but if we can start kids earlier, we tend to see healthier adults."

Tasks need to be geared to the child's age and abilities. Tearing lettuce is something a really young child can help with. Once they are able, getting children to read a recipe aloud provides opportunities to explain measurements and cooking terms.

Read article here

Home Ec: Checking In #homeecteacher

Wow, October is half way over, I feel like I am finally getting my head wrapped around the ins and outs or teaching Home Ec again! I meant to post more sooner, but just haven't had the time... but I want to post more! As a new home ec teacher, I am learning so much and want to share it with others who may find themselves teaching home ec, but also to seek ideas from those of you more experienced home ec teachers =)

My job share partner teachers M-W and typically does the recipe and demo with the students along with the lessons. My Thurs and Fri is typically cooking/lab days and on off weeks continuation of the lessons.

We are doing just foods/cooking, not sewing, which I have taught in the past (Sock Monkeys for 6/7s, PJ pants for 8s)

I wanted to share some of the labs we have made. I didn't get photos of the cheese scones, quesadilla, fruit tarts or berry muffins, however, I do have some of our other labs....

Grade 6/7s did fruit crisps... messy but delicious!

Grade 8s did pizza pockets. Dough was Day 1, Stuffing was Day 2

Grade 6/7s made personal/co-operative pizzas

My face says it all... this was my FIRST lab day, It felt so great to see all the students enjoying their muffins!

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins - these were so yummy!

So, although things are VERY busy, they are going very well! I am really enjoying Home Ec and as first term comes to an end in a couple weeks, I feel like second term will be a blast now that I am used to my new position!!

The obesity era

As the American people got fatter, so did marmosets, vervet monkeys and mice. The problem may be bigger than any of us

Years ago, after a plane trip spent reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Weight Watchers magazine, Woody Allen melded the two experiences into a single essay. ‘I am fat,’ it began. ‘I am disgustingly fat. I am the fattest human I know. I have nothing but excess poundage all over my body. My fingers are fat. My wrists are fat. My eyes are fat. (Can you imagine fat eyes?).’ It was 1968, when most of the world’s people were more or less ‘height-weight proportional’ and millions of the rest were starving. Weight Watchers was a new organisation for an exotic new problem. The notion that being fat could spur Russian-novel anguish was good for a laugh.
That, as we used to say during my Californian adolescence, was then. Now, 1968’s joke has become 2013’s truism. For the first time in human history, overweight people outnumber the underfed, and obesity is widespread in wealthy and poor nations alike. The diseases that obesity makes more likely — diabetes, heart ailments, strokes, kidney failure — are rising fast across the world, and the World Health Organisation predicts that they will be the leading causes of death in all countries, even the poorest, within a couple of years.

Read the whole article here: http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/david-berreby-obesity-era/