To educate children on where their food comes from, Birds Eye has teamed up with National Schools Partnership to give away hundreds of thousands of pea seeds to primary schools across the country. The initiative follows a study of children aged five to eleven which found that almost one in ten (nine per cent) think that pasta is a vegetable, while seven per cent believe that frozen peas grow in the freezer. Scary ! Over a quarter of children (26 per cent) are still unsure of the recommended quantity of fruit and vegetables to eat each day, and five per cent have never eaten any green vegetables. Jamie Oliver, come back - your work is not done !
Over the summer term, up to 3,500 schools will be taking part in the ‘Grow Your Own’ education programme, which will see Birds Eye and National Schools Partnership provide downloadable lesson plans and activities, interactive whiteboard games and video content about growing plants, life cycles and healthy eating. They will also give away 30,000 packs of pea seeds to teach children where their favourite teatime meals come from by taking peas back to their roots and growing them from scratch.
They sent us through our very own Pea Garden pack which we will be planting over the weekend. The Madhouse Mini-testers knew that peas grew on plants (they love shelling them fresh from the farmers' market) but they didn't know that they grew from "old peas" !
They've still done better than many of the kids surveyed though. Here are some more rather worrying findings :
•Children were best able to identify carrots (99 per cent), peas (98 per cent) and sweetcorn (97 per cent), though the study showed that many were unable to identify other vegetables with one in five (20 per cent) unable to recognise an onion and over two-thirds (68 per cent) unable to identify turnip
•One in five children (17 per cent) have yet to grow a plant at school or at home
•Girls perform better when it comes to identifying common vegetables, eat more greens and have a better understanding on the importance of their five-a-day with three quarters (76 per cent) clear on the recommended daily amount
•Children in Scotland have the greatest understanding of where their food comes from with a massive 94 per cent correctly identifying where frozen peas originate
•Yorkshire kids are the most aware of the nutritional benefits of fruit and vegetables with almost four in five children (79 per cent) recommending five portions a day
If you'd like to show your kids more about where Birds Eye peas come from, you could show them the journey from field to plate at http://www.birdseye.co.uk/en-uk/fresh-ideas/our_peas/
for more information : http://www.thegreatfoodjourney.com/
for more information : http://www.thegreatfoodjourney.com/
Disclosure : We received a mini Pea Garden from Birds Eye.
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