Why we should have our cake and eat it

The Government recently released a final draft curriculum for almost all learning areas for Years 1-10. The health and physical education curriculum is one document I have a particular interest in: as a parent of two school-aged children; as a former primary and intermediate school teacher; and as an academic who researches and teaches in the field of health education.

I sat down to write this article after celebrating my son’s 15th birthday, a second slice of cake at my side. And it occurs to me: if the food and nutrition section of our national curriculum were a cake, what cake might it be?

The current health and physical education curriculum might be a chocolate gateau: rich, multi-layered, and full of flavour, texture, culture and meaning.

The recently released draft curriculum is mostly a dry, stale, pale sponge: technically edible (with a smattering of cream and strawberry jam), but on the whole simple, joyless and forgettable.

Let me explain the difference between these two curriculums in terms of how they position food and nutrition education.

Food and nutrition education in the current curriculum is open to be taught in ways that meet the diverse needs, interests, and experiences of students. It is not a one-size-fits-all, prescriptive, ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum.

The curriculum is holistic, guiding students to understand our own and others’ hauora (wellbeing). Food therefore is not solely about physical health – nutrients, calories, and the attainment of the ‘ideal’ body size, shape and weight – but about the interconnecting dimensions of taha whānau (social), taha tinana (physical), taha hinengaro (mental and emotional), and taha wairua (spiritual).

Indeed, one of my favourite learning experiences for students (of all ages) is an investigation of how cake contributes to their hauora. Students think deeply about what cake means to them in their lives (sparking stories of weddings, birthdays, baking with grandma and more), use visual art to express how it enhances different dimensions of their hauora, then share their knowledge of cake and hauora with peers. (This lesson used to be on the Ministry of Education website but has been removed.)

Quality food and nutrition education develops students’ knowledge about what we eat, why we eat, and how we eat. It helps students understand the complex social, cultural, historical, environmental, economic, and political forces that shape our eating and wellbeing.

A truly rich food and nutrition education may also develop practical skills (budgeting, cooking), critical thinking (for example interrogating advertising, which the draft curriculum does mention), and indigenous knowledges (such as mātauranga Māori and Pacific knowledge systems). And it enables students to grapple with inequities and injustices relating to food and wellbeing (such as food insecurity), as well as the means to take critical social action.

In short, food and nutrition education, as currently articulated in the curriculum, is about food, eating and wellbeing, as well as nutrition.

In the new draft curriculum, the comparable section is renamed ‘Nutrition’, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, primarily focuses on food as nutrition.

This curriculum is strongly ideological, what scholar Gyorgy Scrinis would define as nutritionism: “a reductive focus on the nutritional composition of foods as the means for understanding their healthfulness”. The knowledge deemed necessary for students to learn privileges a narrow Western, biomedical version of food, eating and health, at the expense of ‘other’ ways of knowing and being.

Out of the 19 basic ‘facts, concepts, principles, and theories’ that students will be required to learn over eight years of primary schooling, the word ‘food’ is mentioned in fewer than half of them. The verb ‘eat’ is only mentioned three times.

Hauora and mātauranga Māori have been completely omitted. The word ‘sugar’ appears more times than ‘culture’ or ‘society’. There is nothing about politics, the environment, economics, food insecurity, inequities, or taking action. Yet students will be taught (twice!) that “Fizzy drinks often contain a lot of sugar. They can harm teeth”. (Fortunately, cake does not get a mention.)

What makes this section of the draft curriculum so unpalatable are the lost teaching and learning opportunities for all children in Aotearoa.

With quality food and nutrition education, children might cook kai together, share stories from home, learn about where our food comes from, or take action to improve access to food for the more than a fifth of New Zealanders who are food insecure. It’s a curriculum that invites critical thinking, empathy, and a sense of belonging — a full-bodied, rich-with-meaning cake that appreciates diversity and connection.

The new draft ‘Nutrition’ curriculum, with its intensely narrow focus on nutrition and diet, reduces this richness to a list of ingredients – food groups, proteins, fats, carbs, sugar, ‘healthy fats’, minerals, water, and vitamins. Students will be required to learn, and in some cases, regurgitate, this knowledge. It is a curriculum that treats learners as empty bowls waiting to be filled, rather than people with a range of rich knowledge, relationships and experiences with kai.

As I finish off the crumbs from my last slice of cake, I feel satisfied: physically, emotionally, socially, spiritually. The nutrients I’ve consumed mean next to nothing. I don’t care about calories, or sugar, or that I’ve eaten something ‘forbidden’ from the top of the food pyramid. Instead, an evening in which I have experienced fun, pleasure, connection, celebration, singing, culture, belonging, and joy has provided perfect nourishment for my soul. That is what food should be about. And that is what meaningful food and nutrition education should achieve too.