Know seasonal products, know how they are produced, learn to eat well, do cooking workshops, meet local producers. This Monday, the National Assembly will examine a bill from MP Olivia Grégoire (Together for the Republic), intended to experiment with compulsory food education in primary and secondary schools, combining theory and practical courses.
Certainly, this teaching already exists. But “food education is far from having acquired the place it should occupy in school. It is not provided uniformly across the territory and is sometimes taught in a fragmented manner,” underlines the MP in a report. Olivia Grégoire therefore suggests “structuring” and “making more readable” the content of the programs by organizing dedicated and obligatory teaching time. “The bill does not add any additional hours of teaching or unreasonable burden,” assures the MP.
Three sessions per year
At primary level, three sessions would be organized per year. “This teaching would also be linked to school catering, in order to ensure educational continuity between the learning provided in class and the meals offered in the canteen. It would finally include a practical dimension, the modalities of which would be left to the free choice of the teaching teams,” specifies the bill. In middle school, food education would involve the creation of a compulsory annual food education project, integrated into the establishment’s health education program (PES). Finally, in high school, this teaching would become an optional module.
In order to “learn lessons from the difficulties of implementing information and sexuality education”, Olivia Grégoire suggests going through an experiment, in voluntary establishments, for a period of three years, with a first evaluation after 18 months.
17% of adults are obese
For the MP, it is about meeting the expectations of the French. According to an Ifop survey, 87% of French people say they are in favor of cooking classes at school to learn how to eat well, on a reduced budget. But above all, it is a public health problem. “At 8 years old, a child has already ingested more sugar than their grandparents in their entire life,” recalled Olivia Grégoire during the passage of her bill in committee.
In France, 4% of children and adolescents aged 6 to 17 and 17% of adults are obese, indicates Santé Publique France. The cost to the health system of the consequences of an unbalanced diet (cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, etc.) is estimated at 125 billion euros per year.
