The Washington Post ran an article this week about a professor at a small Maryland college who used the work of Weston A. Price to teach a “global perspectives” course through food. He used local food, traditional methods including soaking and nixtamilization, foraged food, home curing, raw milk and raw milk cheeses…all the processes I’ve been learning about on my real food journey. The wise professor said of his course:

“I wanted them to take away something they could use in their lives.”

Isn’t that the goal of education? From the time our children are padding along behind us imitating our every move until the day they move out, we have an awesome opportunity to provide our children with tools for their lives. What are we teaching them when we don’t “have time” for real food preparation…when we can plunk down $100 a month for TV but complain about the price of pastured eggs…when we buy into a system of food cultivation, preparation and delivery that exploits people, taints food and encourages disease because it’s fast and cheap?

I applaud this professor, he’s a real Food Renegade. But let’s not wait until our children are in college for someone else to teach them what we can do at home. Let’s get preschoolers learning about plants by sprouting; first graders combining flavors by making salad; second graders investigating the bugs in the garden; fourth graders bettering their breakfast by scrambling eggs; fifth graders learning fractions by up and down scaling recipes; sixth graders learning about elements, compounds and mixtures by squishing meatloaf; seventh graders learning different world cultures through their traditional foods and preparation; eighth graders studying chemical reactions by baking bread. Let’s get children writing their own cookbooks full of their favorite meals with traditional food prep instructions. Let’s teach them that food can be both slow and fast when prepared at home, like oatmeal: slow from overnight soaking, fast to cook in the morning.

What if we invested our time and attention in our children in the kitchen instead of shooing them out? What if, through the process of meal planning, preparation and forethought, our children learned something other than the hurry-up-and-eat-whatever instant gratification of microwave meals? What parts of their lives would be touched and changed by the overflow?

This post is part of Fight Back Friday, hosted by Food Renegade.

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