Member Article

Food Nation gets kids cooking with Jamie Oliver on Food Revolution Day

A Newcastle-based social enterprise, a celebrity chef and local school children joined forces to cook up a storm in support of a global food campaign.

Food Nation, working in partnership with The Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, visited Byker Primary School and Welbeck Academy to take part in the third annual Food Revolution Day [FRD] (Friday, May 16) - a day of global action spearheaded by Jamie Oliver, to inspire children to get excited about cooking fresh, healthy food from scratch.

Byker-based Food Nation, which hosts Jamie’s Ministry of Food courses in the North East, worked with 55 children, aged 7-11, to take part in a live, global online cooking class with Jamie Oliver. The team also helped Benfield High School and St Vincent’s RC Primary School to get involved in Food Revolution Day by setting up and running the cookery classes themselves.

The Food Nation team works closely with these schools to develop activities for ‘Change 4 Life East Newcastle’ - a partnership funded by Public Health at Newcastle City Council that brings together organisations, schools and community groups working across the East End of the city – which was put in place to address different aspects of diet, physical activity and rising obesity levels in the area.

Watching Jamie live via a projector screen in the school hall, the Byker Primary School pupils (pictured) learnt how to make deliciously colourful Rainbow Salad Wraps packed with a tasty mix of fruit and vegetables, while joining more than 107 countries and 9030 schools across the world to support Food Revolution Day.

Amanda Nyeke, cooking skills manager at Food Nation, who led the session, said: “We work closely with Jamie to deliver the Ministry of Food courses in Newcastle, and it’s been fantastic to see the children get stuck in to his live cookery lesson, thanks to this live link-up. It’s hands-on activities such as these which encourage kids to see the fun side of food and learn more about where it comes from.”

Head teacher of Byker Primary School, Mrs Linda Bradley, said: “The children thoroughly enjoyed the excitement of taking part in a live cook- along with Jamie Oliver and Food Nation. We’re always keen to explore fun, new ways of educating our children about food, and this was a great, innovative way of using technology to get cooking with schools right across the world.”

Jamie Oliver said: “Everyone knows that over the last few years I’ve been passionate about getting kids and young people to be taught to cook, whether in schools or at home. I believe that we all now have a duty to teach children to understand what food does to their bodies if we’re going to make any progress in tackling obesity and diet-related disease, that means governments, businesses, everyone.”

For more details about Food Nation, visit www.foodnation.org or call 0191 276 0595.

For further information about Food Revolution Day, visit www.foodrevolutionday.com

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Uniquethinking PR team .