By Kim Smith – PhD researcher at Centre for Food Policy, City St Georges, University of London and trustee at TastEd.
During the 2024 Abergavenny Food Festival, food education researcher and advocate Kim Smith ran a food education networking event with a Festival sourced breakfast. After feasting on Angel Bakery croissants, charities, school staff, local authority representatives and local food education programmes all called loudly for food education to be on the Festival main programme. In response, this year, a panel titled Edible Education – How can children learn to eat well? took place at The Octopus Books Dome.
images: Claire Thompson and Kim Smith, Panel in Octopus Books Dome
Drawing from their experience in food education in schools, communities and at home, Kim returned to the Festival with Angharad ‘Rag’ Underwood, founder of the Cookalong Clwb, and Claire Thompson, chef and food writer of 5 O’clock Apron to talk about how we can help children develop good food habits. Chaired by Helen Cottle, the Corporate Catering Manager at Monmouthshire County Council, the discussion ranged from ensuring children are frequently in the kitchen getting their hands dirty, allowing children to take the lead in the kitchen, to using simple and fun TastEd (sensory food education) approaches in schools and nurseries, to gently help children to explore new vegetables and fruits using their senses.
The stark reality of food education across the UK was discussed as Kim highlighted the current focus on healthy eating, at the expense of a broad food education, that includes food growing, farming, cooking and more. Rag talked about how many parents lack confidence in the kitchen themselves, and fear giving children autonomy in the kitchen, something they quickly overcome in the online cook along. Claire talked passionately about how her love of food and eating as a chef and parent has enabled her daughter to head off to university with the confidence to cook for herself from scratch. She recommended “not worrying too much” about children’s reactions to food, sharing how her daughter hates mushrooms, but is growing to like them.
Meanwhile, food education crept up across the weekend, particularly in the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme recorded at the Festival. Sheila Dillon hosted a panel talk to learn about Wales’s Secret Ingredient: Lessons from Cymru on the Future of Food including Welsh food historian and author, Carwyn Graves who also co-founded Cegin y Bobl – the Welsh food education charity. Carwyn described the new Welsh curriculum “that creates space for teaching across traditional subject boundaries” taking something as humble as a potato, and learning history, geography or nutrition through food, bringing the curriculum to life. Similarly, Nicole from the Size of Wales project highlighted how the children audited their school menus for deforestation risk, then reimagined meals “deforestation free chickpea korma” which they took to the Monmouthshire County Council who then put it onto the menu for all the primary schools in the county.
Alongside all this debate, real food education was taking place in Castell Howell Kids’ Cookery School, where children made Welsh veg pasties and learnt about the local, seasonal ingredients they used.
This is just a taste of what was going on across the Festival weekend. The topic of food education arose across the weekend, as a solution to the current hospitality crisis, the topic of a new cookbook. and much more. Plans are underway for festival food education in 2026 to ensure food education remains part of the festival discussion… always over good food.