TastEd – Taste Education
TastEd helps schools and nurseries to deliver taste education, to give every child the opportunity to experience the joy of fresh vegetables and fruits. The charity aims to revolutionise the way Food Education is taught in the UK, so that taste education becomes a basic aspect of every child’s knowledge. They offer teachers support, training and resources to deliver a range of simple, classroom based, taste education lessons that are tailored to UK curriculum.
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food, primary school
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'Link to local growers to give children the chance to learn about different vegetables while also finding out about the benefits of locally sourced food'
How is the project linked to climate change & sustainability?
By introducing children to a wide range of fresh vegetables, TastEd raises awareness of local and seasonal food production. The educational opportunities provided by the project allow children to see how locally produced food can reduce food miles and the resulting carbon emissions. The project also links to growing and cooking projects, allowing children to learn about the possibilities of growing, tasting and cooking the food that they eat.
Who is involved?
TastEd provides nurseries and schools with all of the training, resources and support that they need to be able to work with children to learn more about fresh and nutritious food.
How are the participants involved?
In a typical TastEd lesson – which requires no kitchen or fancy equipment to teach – a teacher brings fresh vegetables or fruits into the classroom. The children talk and write about what they see, smell, touch, hear and taste and whether they enjoy it or not. A course of TastEd lessons equips children with the skills they need for developing a taste for healthy foods as well as the confidence to talk about their own preferences. TastEd lessons are based on the Sapere method, which has been used with great success in many European countries for decades. Taste education is food education pared down to its simplest form, but the impact on the way children relate to food can be huge.
Key steps:
- During a typical lesion, a range of fresh vegetables are selected.
- When selecting vegetables, think about their colour, size, shape, smell and texture.
- Different tables in the classroom are set up to represent each of the senses – sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste.
- Children are asked to discuss what each of the items looks like, smells like, sounds like when they eat them, feels like and tastes like. This provides opportunities to learn about each of the vegetable, where they come from, what time of the year they grow and how they are grown.
- Further conversations around climate and sustainability can then be included in the learning.
- Following class discussions, children can be supported to grow their own vegetables in the school garden and to cook with these once they have been harvested.