Technocrat

"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK

zogger
Tue Jan 22 18:44:32 -0800 2008
Health+and+Medicine.
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In an effort to help combat childhood obesity, and so that the kids carry this idea of "healthy food" on into adult life, schools in the UK that have the necessary facilities will be requiring students to take classes in "practical cookery", where they will be taught how to prepare nutritious meals using fresh foods. They are also soliciting the public for good recipes to use in the curriculum.
ed: being a chowhound, I think I would have loved this idea in school, although I had it pretty much covered in my voluntary "homework", heh!

.."The Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) welcomed the principle of introducing cookery lessons for 11 to 14-year-olds, but expressed concerns about the impact on the curriculum, the funding required and the training needed for staff."....more, no, beenie weenie with parsley on top of it for a garnish does not count, there

"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
Alan
Tue Jan 22 19:03:37 -0800 2008
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A couple of years ago the "Cockney celeb chef" Jamie Oliver did a series on "school_dinners" (food served in schools) and showed what a disgusting unhealthy diet most British children were being brought up on, and started a campaign to reform the approach to feeding children. The government was embarrassed into taking some action.
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
efennama
Tue Jan 22 19:21:03 -0800 2008
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They are just reverting back to the 80s when every school with the facilities had home economics classes for all students age 11 to 14. At least that is what happened within Leicestershire, however I welcome a return to the 80s and the 3R's plus the Humanities rather than all this new fangled technical and vocational rubbish
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
atm
Tue Jan 22 19:34:55 -0800 2008
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Hahaha, English cooking! *wipes tear from eye* Sorry, it's just too easy to make fun of how they obliteratecook their food.
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
Keith
Tue Jan 22 19:46:55 -0800 2008
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I spent a couple of years in England in the late 80s (at RAF Greenham Common). Based on my experience they make a decent pub sandwich (okay. . . it was almost always preceded by much beer) and they have great Indian food.

And... I think they gave us both pumpkin and mincemeat pie (although they stopped making pumpkin for some reason).
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
atm
Tue Jan 22 20:03:56 -0800 2008
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Sandwiches aren't very special, and Indian food isn't English :-) Perhaps they adopted the American pumpkin pie-making tradition... but their meat pies are generally overcooked and pale in comparison with other cuisine.
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
maethorechannen
Wed Jan 23 02:17:29 -0800 2008
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Indian food isn't English

The Indian food found in most Indian restaurants and takeaways in the UK is not the same as Indian food found in India (in the same way that Pizza isn't Italian, but American). So Indian food in England is English.

English food - so bad even the English don't eat it anymore.
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
GuyFawkes
Wed Jan 23 04:16:07 -0800 2008
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To be honest, *proper* traditional english food, made with proper ingredients and cooked properly, is bloody gorgeous.

Proper english grub in england is of course as rare as proper thai grub, plenty of thai restaurants, but you get the idea.
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
Charles E Hill
Wed Jan 23 09:01:32 -0800 2008
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We have a family recipe for Plum Pudding that was passed down from my great, great, great grandmother who lived in the Wolverhampton district (now West Midlands, I believe).  Prepared properly -- and it takes a while -- we can't make enough.

People who had it last year (it is a Christmas dish) call starting in November asking if we're making it again this year and can they get some.

I've also had a few home-cooked mince pies and shepherd's pies that were fantastic.
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
Alcibiades
Wed Jan 23 05:32:18 -0800 2008
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You may not realize if you do not live in the UK how, in many household, no cooking in the usual sense is done any more. What happens is that prepared food is bought and reheated. Studies have shown that many schoolchildren simply do not know where prepared food comes from - not geographically, but in the precise sense, that they do not know that chips come from potatoes, those round earthy things that you see in bags in stores or that bread is made with flour. Or that apple pie is made from apples.

Yes, it seems perfectly extraordinary, but it does appear to be true. And when confronted with this weird object, a potato, the first reaction is not unreasonably to wonder if it is edible and if anyone has ever eaten this stuff before, and what it tastes like.

We have actually an odd paradox. The socialist regimes and experiments of the early twentieth century always used to want to product communal living. There would be common nurseries in which children would be collectively reared. There would be common kitchens in which food would be cooked for a collective mealtime. It would all be so nice and cozy.

However, they rather failed to sell this. It was left to the fast food and supermarket industry to succeed, and to the incentives of the welfare state to produce family breakup on a hitherto unprecedented scale.
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
GuyFawkes
Wed Jan 23 06:40:15 -0800 2008
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and to the incentives of the welfare state to produce family breakup on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

It's an old saw, but it just ain't true.

Family breakups very very rarely have anything to do with the welfare state, and everything to do with people not being prepared to put anything into relationships and not willing to tolerate behaviour from the partner that they expect the partner to tolerate, eg screwing around.

All you can lay at the welfare state is single mums can afford to be single mums, as opposed to married mums who would love to leave but can't afford to.

In my recent driving gig, in which the drivers take home after deductions was approx 800 quid a month, there was a lot of talk about sponging single mums getting family credits / tax credits / benefits, then they all look at me like I've got two heads when I say on day one of employment with the firm I put in a claim for working tax credit (taxation wise I am a single man, the missus lives 300 yards away) and was now getting 47 quid a week paid into my bank, automatic like, a week later everyone had applied for it....

By the next month when it was rolling into their banks, no more whining about single mums... get the picture?

Down here in Devon, you'd be hard pushed to find a kid that didn't know chips came from potatoes, fish came from the sea, bacon came from pigs, etc.

My local butcher has even on occasion asked if I was a butcher, given my preference for a cut from the neck end rather than the ass end of an animal.

Please don't confuse city folks with rural folks, most rural kids can tell you if a pig's dick is left or right hand thread 5 years before they get the mandatory sex education class in school.
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
ChrisM
Wed Jan 23 12:14:44 -0800 2008
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Is this the UK we're talking about or just England? Because as far as I know, Home Ec classes are compulsory in Scotland. I did it in first and second year, we did both cooking and sewing etc. Every other school in the area did it as well.

At any rate, it could be a good idea, with more and more parents preparing food from packages as has been stated. Many kids don't know how to cook for themselves by the time they reach the stage where they're moving out of the house (whether permanently or for study) and rely on packaged food for sustenance. One of my firends once survived about a week on Beer and Digestive biscuits, although I suspect that was more to do with laziness than inability to cook...

Then again, having said that this area has a compulsory Home Ec class for High School kids, I believe Glasgow has the highest rate of Heart Disease in Europe, so could that be evidence that it's maybe not the best route to be taking?

Introducing good eating concepts in the educational system is a good start, and I think more investigation should be carried out in this area as to how the national attitude towards food could be changed. It's not just the kids that need to be educated, but the parents as well. Healthy eating is pretty much viewed here as a 'fashionable fad' among the rich and famous. I think it's time to change that attitude.

M.

P.S. I am ASTOUNDED to find such uninformed and banal jibes about British cuisine here on Technocrat. I thought we were better than that. Every culture in the world has unique and excellent  food, if you care to look for it and don't let prejudices cloud your judgement.
"Practical Cookery" to be Compulsory in Schools in UK
Simon
Thu Jan 24 18:47:52 -0800 2008
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P.S. I am ASTOUNDED to find such uninformed and banal jibes about British cuisine here on Technocrat....

If we are going for gross generalizations.....

What astonished me on trips to America was the lack of fresh produce in supermarkets. At least if you can cook in the UK, there is zero problem getting the ingredients. I so hope there were a lot of huge greengrocers somewhere in America, which I  didn't see for some reason.
 

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