The Jamie Oliver Food Foundation and Food Day Launch Food Education Campaign
New Initiative to Urge Food Education and Cooking Classes in Nation's Schools
July 8, 2013
The Jamie Oliver Food Foundation and Food Day have joined forces to promote food education and cooking classes in schools across America. The nationwide campaign, Get Food Education in Every School, will raise awareness about the critical importance of food education as a means of reducing obesity and diet-related disease in children.
"This is a chance to start talking about how food education should be an integrated part of the school curriculum," said Jamie Oliver, chef and founder of the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit. "Hands-on cooking and essential food skills should be taught to every child at every school in the country. Healthy diets are critical to healthy lives but our children lack the knowledge to make the right food choices or the skills to create healthy, wholesome, and nutritious meals."
Providing children with food education has never been more vitally important than it is today, the organizers say. As a result of diet-related disease:
- Today's children may be the first to die at a younger age than their parents.
- One-third of children in the United States are overweight or obese.
- Fewer than 20 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 18 eat the recommended five or more servings of fruits or vegetables each day.
"The names and logos of junk-food giants like McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Chuck E. Cheese's are firmly imprinted on kids' brains, yet as Jamie has shown, some kids can't identify tomatoes, cauliflower, or eggplants," said Michael F. Jacobson, the founder of