Comment by cknoxrun
7 years ago
It’s important to note that this is taught in schools starting from as early as grade 1. I do believe that teaching children about the joys of eating food and sharing meals could have a positive impact. Consider France, arguably one of the healthiest nations when it comes to food, where this is culturally ingrained from an early age.
> It’s important to note that this is taught in schools starting from as early as grade 1.
My kids come home with hungry with half-eaten lunches complaining how they didn’t have enough time to eat. They get rushed to finish within 10-15 minutes and go outside. This is a universal complaint among parents.
We’re culturally ingraining eating as something you rush through on the way to something else.
Isn't that a good thing? Eating for the sake of enjoying eating seems more like a problem than a solution here, eating should be more something you do because you need to rather than something you do for fun.
If you want something beneficial, teach people to enjoy cooking rather than eating.
Food is essential fuel for life and we have complex relationships with it. One could say that some of the recent emphasis on mindfulness around eating is that when we eat as a background task rather than giving it focus, we tend to eat junk and/or overeat.
They have a page about taking time to eat [0] under the eating habits section. It might take a long time before any cultural or policy change happens but they at least acknowledge that being rushed or distracted isn't helpful.
[0] https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/healthy-eating-recommendatio...
Out of curiosity where are you located? I chatted with my partner, a K-6 teacher and here they get 30 minutes to eat followed by 30 minutes to play or go to an activity (like choir). This seems reasonable to me.
You know what would be better is longer lunches and a little less class time anyhow.
2 hours max a day of 'guided learning' a day, the rest somewhere between 'self learning' and 'fooling around' is fine.