Eatparade

Eat Parade is a virtual platform built with the intention of putting together all wonderful things we can achieve together. We are wishful to be at the service of Schools at every level, in order to provide them a social networking service, where they could be able to share their educational projects and conceive new ones. Through Eat Parade, we do want to direct it towards a debate concerned with both food and enviromental sphere, but also cultural and scientific thematics. Schools and Researchers will be combined together in order to create a network, thanks to which they will be able to share their experience, aiming to give birth to a community based on knowledge and opened to all who would partecipate.

On the one hand, the process behind the actual fulfillment of didactic project could be quite demanding, particularly in terms of resources and management. On the other hand, all that comes from Researchers sometimes could go unheeded. Due to this, the converging of these two dimensions represents what we aim at. Moreover, what we would provide is a stimulation in order to generate a diffuse reflection process, about all the critical issues that matter nowadays. In the end what we would like to offer to you is not only a paltform: we would like to offer the opportunity to educate, with diligence and at the same time in a pleasant and educative way,our future citizens.

FOOD EDUCATION PROJECTS FOR SCHOOLS

A Food Education model

Based on the study of National and International experiences in the Food Education field, we have reason to believe that the following elements could be taken as quality indicators, as for every Food Education Project, according to the Guidelines approved by the Ministry of Education (MIUR) in Italy.

Purposes

•Incentivize the awareness of the essential relationship between food and health, so as to promote a personal and collective food awareness.
•Support the implementation of healthy food related habits, by opting for more opportune dictic methods and by taking in deep consideration the agroindustrial products knowledge, given the fact that those are products grown respecting the enviroment, the culture and the tradition of the territory, legality and the ethic values.
•Promote agroindustrial system knowledge through the deep understanding of the connections between the productive and the distributive systems, food resources, enviroment and society.
•Promote Food Education in relationship with historical, scientific, geographical, cultural, anthropological, social and psychological aspects, related with both personal and collective food connection.
•Promote an overall concept of food quality, which could incorporate all the emerging values concerned with: sustainability, ethics, periodicity, cross-culture, territorialità and food security.

Contents

There are five essential thematic areas which are worth mentioning, each one refearring to a specific aspect of the connection between life and food.

•The sensorial connection with food. Sense organs are first and most important vehicle we have in order to know and judge food, as for both its pleasantness and its quality combined with hygienical aspects.
•Nutrition. What food is made of, its foundamentals and the physiology of nutrition: these are educational programs main topics.
•Food knowledge: beginning with the food production process, through the transformation, packing, labeling, distribution, conservation and preparation ones.•
•Hygiene and food security: understanding the importance of a proper food manipulation process and a proper food conservation course.
•Cultural food approach: territorial connection; sustainable elements; all the different gastronomic traditions; cross-cultural debate and biodiversità promotion; rituals, places and manners of the relationship with food, including purchase and consumption.

Methods

According to Constructivistic Psycology, among all the Educational Projects those which have to be endorsed are the proactive ones. As a matter of fact, the Projects where children play an active role in their learning process are more advisable. In order to make this happen, it is essential that:
•laboratory activities should be promoted;
•make sure that all the activities promoted have a playful aspect;
•make sure to use different leanguages;
•use as much as possible information technology communications;
•involve the territory you live in;
•make sure diversity is detected as a resource.

Leading actors

School should be related to the Health System, Local Authorities, Food Industry, the agricutural world, the distribution world, the trade world and the communication wordl. Moreover, School should be connected to families and all the citizens, as consumers. What it is actually essential is the actively involvement in a collective promotion process concerned with personal, collective and eviromental wellness.