What's happening in Food Skills

New Cooking Skills Program - City University, London

From Penelope Beatty Queensland Health

City University London researchers are calling for more government support for initiatives aimed at improving cooking skills across the UK, after a recent study in Liverpool demonstrated the powerful impact cooking skills can have on promoting healthy eating and lifestyles. Visit 

http://www.cancook.co.uk/community-schools-cookery/cookery-for-schools/city-of-london-university-evaluation-on-can-cook-work-with-schools/ to find out more information about the Can Cook program

Need for Feed - is a new community cooking program from Diabetes Australia Queesnland designed for young people who may not be able to access food skills programs traditionally taught in home economics classes. The classes are held in schools on weekends, after school or during the school holidays and are facilitated by trained teachers or health professionals.
For more information contact Health Promotions Officer, Rachel Latimore on
Phone (07) 3506 0948 or email needforfeed@diabetesqld.org.au

For the web site visit http://www.needforfeed.com.au/ 

 Family Food Patch - a new initiaive from Tasmanian Food Security Council

Taken from the web site

Family Food PATCH (FFP) aims to improve the health and wellbeing of Tasmanian children through peer education. The program focuses on developing personal skills, creating supportive environments and strengthening community action.

“It’s basically a peer education program giving volunteer parents and community members the
skills to speak with other parents about physical activity and nutritional concerns.”

Volunteers are usually parents, but may also include local community/health workers who work with families or children such as teacher’s aides, family day care workers, child health nurses and community house coordinators.

“The training runs for a total of 25 hours, with sessions conducted one day per week for 5 weeks on nutrition and physical activity for children as well as communication skills and community action.”

Once trained, the Family Food Educators (FFEs) are encouraged and supported by the FFP Officer and their local dietitian to spread the message about healthy eating and physical activity to children and families in the community.

Visit for more information
http://www.familyfoodpatch.org.au/index.html



Food Glorious Food...the other side of the dinner plate

'For most of us, food is available whenever we want. For dinner, we open our
fridge, select an array of nutritious and delicious foods (hopefully from a few of
the healthy food groups) and prepare a bountiful meal. If we’re lucky, someone
else has even prepared the meal for us and neither option is going to send
us broke. In Australia, good food is readily available. It’s relatively cheap and
easy to access—simply head to your nearest supermarket or local takeaway.
Thanks to sound economic policies and successful agricultural production, the
majority of Australians would be described as ‘food secure’. Many poor people
in developing countries are not. Many can’t afford the food they need because
they don’t earn enough and the food they can afford is often of insufficient
nutritional value. A lot of farmers in developing countries can’t grow enough
to feed their families let alone access the markets where they could sell
surplus crops to make a living. The Australian Government is working to make
people in developing countries more food secure. While providing emergency
food assistance to prevent the poorest from going hungry, the Australian
Government is also working to improve livelihoods, access to markets, and
agricultural production through research."   p. 9 FOCUS June - Sept 2011

FOCUS is AusAID's (Australia's Aid Organisation) magazine - this quarter focuses on food security and highlights how AusAID is supporting food and agricultural projects around the globe.  Download this quarter's Focus magazine here.

And have you heard about 'the girl effect' ?? You look after the girl...you look after the family...the community ...and the world...

c policies and

From Penelope Beatty , Senior Nutritionist at Queensland Health sent through this encouraging news via the Food Literacy Network

More cooks – More than two thirds of Australians are now saying they love to cook, compared to last year when less than half of Aussies said they loved to cook, according to a report by the vegetable industry.

 http://ausveg.com.au/_webapp_868097/Big_jump_in_the_number_of_Aussies_who_say_they_‘love_to_cook’

3. From Donna Pendergast, Griffiths University and Yvonne Dewhurst, Aberdeen University invite home economics educators and other health professionals working in food and nutrition to participate in a survey on food literacy by 22nd July 2011.
The survey aims to to find positive ways to change the perception of home economcs in the curriculum and to look at the role of Home Economics in developing food literacy in students.
The survey will take about 5-10 minutes to complete and the link can be find at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L8GYWPZ
A background article on Bring back home economics can be read

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/303/18/1857.extract 
You can contact me if you would like the full article as I am unable to upload a pdf document on to this blog or at wordpress.
The authors Ludwig and Lichtenstein are medical doctors and the article was recently published in a first class peer reviewed journal American Medical Association May 12, 2010, Volume 303 No 18 pp 1857-1858.
This alone is a fantastic plug for home economics - to be published in a reputable journal such as JAMA and authored by academics outside our field are worth millions to helping us to validate our credibility as experts.
As home economics professionals we help everyday individuals to develop their food skills which ultimately leads them to live healthier lives and minimise their risks of developing obesity. 
We help deal with the obesity crisis better than most as we help people in practical ways such as teaching everyday people how to plan. shop and cook tasty meals for themselves and their families.