Greenside primary school is an inner-city London school whose alternative curriculum revolves entirely around food, weaving it into the curriculum across the arts, sciences and humanities. But they start with the basics, in their own vegetable garden, where the children grow, pick, and cook their own, exclusively vegetarian, school lunches. The school also grows wheat and the children bake their own bread, some of which is sold at the school’s micro-bakery and some of which is donated to local food banks. “Food production is the human activity that has the single biggest impact on our planet so it’s vital children engage in and understand how food is grown and made,” said Karen Bastick-Styles, executive head at Greenside. “To save the planet, we need to work with the earth, which means we need to eat healthily, naturally and that our farming is environmentally friendly. Children can only grow into adults who support that, if they are educated about it,” she said. Greenside is not alone in its focus on stretching the field-to fork ethos to the classroom: Nicole Pisani, co-founder of Chefs in Schools, says that half of the 58 schools working with the school food transformation charity, half joined in the last two years.
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