Jimmy and I first bonded over our love of great food. From our first date over croissants and coffee in a café in French Canada, food has proven to be a shared passion for us both. Many hours of our relationship have been spent cooking for each other and our children. It has been an important part of our lives, and often the way we have shown our love for each other.

We have taken it in turns to create comforting dinners for the other after a stressful day at work, bake each other’s favourite cake to celebrate birthdays, sample new recipes for date night, or celebrate our wins by splashing out on a meal in our favourite restaurant. Jimmy has unwound from many a stressful day at work by creating curries in the kitchen, or managed his inner frustration at being unable to help me cope with the latest migraine attack by magicking up a bowl of my favourite ramen.

The greatest moments of our lives have often been punctuated by food, be it the Austrian Germknödel we ate at our wedding reception, the flapjacks I made in early labour and refuelled with in the magical hours after our son was born, the cicchetti we ate on the streets of Venice on honeymoon, or the hours we spent lovingly preparing food for our daughter’s first birthday party.

The Universal Language of Connection

Food is the language of love, not just because of its effects on our senses but also because of the connection it creates. A connection strengthened by expressing our love for others in the food we create for them in our kitchens, but also through the quality time it generates in enjoying eating our food together. Hosting family and friends for meals, BBQs, and birthdays has always provided the chance to step outside of the chaos of life and sit and be present with our loved ones.

Food is the language of love, not just because of its effects on our senses but also because of the connection it creates.

Connection through food is universal. In each country we have travelled to, we have met kindhearted people who wanted to share their culture, their traditions, their pride for their local customs, and it is often through the universal language of food that these exchanges occur, language barrier or not. Be it the Moroccan stall holder bestowing fresh oranges on the children, our Thai homestead host inviting us to share in his ritual of making and enjoying sticky rice, or the Indian Malay friend in Penang who bought us curry puffs to try for breakfast.

We all take a genuine comfort from the act of sharing our traditions, particularly the joy of nourishing others with food. It is a simple yet compassionate act that offers more in that sentiment than words ever could. It creates connection. This is the same practice that sees the Christian church sharing bread and wine in Holy Communion, as a ritual of remembrance for Jesus: for his life, his death, and his resurrection. Similarly, if you visit a Hindu temple you will see food being offered up to the Gods as a practice of devotion.

Energy and Intention in Food Preparation

There are many situations in life—celebrations, first dates, weddings, funerals—where food is shared. Food is nourishment, food is connection, food is devotion, food is passion, food is life-preserving. Good food nourishes and gives life, whilst bad food can limit life through morbidity and mortality.

We fuel our Prana, our Chi, our life force, whatever you like to call it, through the food that we put in our mouths. We pass on our energy, our love, our karma through the food that we prepare for loved ones. If we are in a bad mood when we prepare a meal, or are preoccupied or stressed out, it shows up in our cooking. The food becomes less digestible and probably less palatable for all who eat it.

Instead of creating the intended sustenance, we pass on our negative energy, thus depleting the meal of its value for the recipient. This obviously can’t be helped at times, when we have had a busy or stressful day at work and need to feed the children before getting them into bed. Food preparation can become a chore, monotonous and tiring when completed in this way.

We pass on our energy, our love, our karma through the food that we prepare for loved ones.

I have spent many an evening staring desperately into the fridge, hoping that inspiration will come my way to help me turn the lacklustre ingredients sitting there into a palatable dinner. I know that on these evenings, I do not provide my finest cuisine or showcase my love. Instead, it is the days that I start dinner early, enthused to instil some creativity into my cooking and excited to share it with my family, that I produce a dish that creates a moment in time for us to share together and nourish us all.

Building Food Values From the Beginning

Since the kids were small, we have put a huge amount of effort into making eating an enjoyable activity that we do together as a family. We wanted to share this message of food being love, connection, and nourishment with our children. This looked like homemade baby food during weaning, carefully planning meals so that they could try out new flavours and textures.

Watching them try to pick up peas for the first time, or gum their way through a piece of melon was as rewarding for me as it was for them. I never enjoyed the clean-up afterwards, but the fun we had together doing this was worth it. As they have grown, we have tried to get them involved in the cooking process: handling the raw ingredients, mixing, rolling, kneading, chopping, so they connect with the food they are eating.

It felt important to get them to understand what food is, to generate a curiosity around it rather than a fear of any new foods. By doing this and discussing the foods as we went, we have tried to teach them about which foods nourish and which do not. Cooking with whole-food ingredients, trying out new recipes and sharing them together, we have tried to make the process fun but the message consistent.

Fighting Against School Food Culture

When we joined the school system, it felt like it had the potential to derail this message. The food landscape felt pretty barren. The school meals being served up were cold and far from the fresh, healthy meals that the kids had come to know at home. Our daughter would report that the other children would frequently avoid eating them, opting to go hungry or satisfying themselves with just a bread roll or the sweet pudding.

The lunchboxes being enjoyed by other pupils, or in some cases the teachers, were often loaded with highly processed, pre-packaged food without a fruit or vegetable in sight. My daughter would look on in envy, frequently asking me why she wasn’t allowed a chocolate bar in her lunchbox. After-school snacks being provided to hungry children were often of the same ilk—biscuits and crisps to feed those that often hadn’t eaten at lunchtime.

The school food environment was making our daughter feel abnormal for eating healthy food.

It was hard to keep going with the message that food is there to nourish us, to create connection, to contribute to health and wellbeing. The school food environment was instead making our daughter feel abnormal for eating healthy food. What was in our daughter’s lunchbox often became the talking point, and this wasn’t always expressed in a way that made her feel comfortable. She was not given the time necessary to sit and fully enjoy her meal either, often returning home with a half-eaten lunchbox which she had not been given time to finish.

Everything else in the school day, it seemed, was a priority over proper nourishment of the children. An NHS survey showed that 1 in 7 children aged 2-15 years were obese in 2022. It is easy to see why the problem is occurring but difficult to accept that more isn’t being done to tackle it. There is no emphasis on creating the right message surrounding food, what the point of eating is, and what our end goals are.

The Challenge of Processed Food Marketing

Food is a precious gift to nourish our bodies from inside out, not just a quick fix to satisfy our senses. As parents, it is difficult to fight upstream against the prevailing food culture, and if school doesn’t create a safe environment away from it, then it makes our job of encouraging our children to make healthy choices even more difficult.

There is highly processed food constantly available wherever you look in most “Westernised” places around the world, and the kids are lured towards it. The marketing brands know what they are doing to ensure that the food labels appeal to all, young or old. I remember being baffled by the fact that my toddlers would approach the sweet aisle of the supermarket with glee, picking up chocolate bars and asking for one, having never tasted chocolate before.

The brightly coloured packets signalled to the kids that whatever was inside must taste good, without needing to have sampled it before or be able to decipher the labels. It takes strong determination as a parent to say no to the continual onslaught of food available, particularly when faced with the guilt of our kids watching on as their friends enjoy their favourite treats every day.

Reclaiming Food Education at Home

Stepping away from school has allowed us to regain control of the message we are trying to give to our kids. Shopping, cooking, and eating together has now become a central part of our kids’ education. We teach them about the raw food ingredients that they are eating by visiting local markets and discussing what to buy depending on what is in season, what is available and fresh, what has been grown locally, and what we fancy cooking.

We try to teach the kids about the natural seasonal rhythms of nature and how trying to eat with this flow is good for our bodies. We get the kids to consider where the fruit or vegetables have been grown, checking labels in the supermarket, and whether it is a good choice for us. We find ourselves frequently discussing why we shouldn’t buy the kiwi fruits from New Zealand when we are living in Morocco and the locally grown pomegranates taste just as good.

Shopping, cooking, and eating together has now become a central part of our kids’ education.

We talk about how we can minimise food miles to try to reduce our carbon footprint, but also why locally grown food is fresher and more alive given how long it will have taken to reach our plates, thus providing more nourishment for our bodies. We can continue that connection with the environment around us and the wonders of nature and the need to preserve it. The hope is that by focusing our attention on this, and the tasty dishes that can be created with a little fun and experimentation, we are taking the lure away from the highly processed foods out there.

A benefit from stepping away from school and slowing down has meant that we are able to enjoy all of our meals together as a family now. This often has the effect of putting a punctuation point over that period of time, allowing us to stop our various activities in order to come together to connect over food. The meal provides the nourishment, but it also provides the platform for connection.

Teaching Gratitude and Cultural Curiosity

It creates the natural break points in the day so that we can reconvene, check in, share, and plan. For us as a home-educating family, where we coexist in small spaces and are constantly trying to juggle various conflicting agendas, this feels so important. The micro reflections and readjustments seem to help the flow of the day and ensure that we are all getting a chance to contribute.

It is important for us that the kids view food as a precious commodity and a gift. That eating three meals a day is a privilege and a chance to fuel their bodies to be able to complete all of their intended jobs that day. Travelling in poorer countries than our own has given us all a newfound appreciation for this. We have never gone hungry, but there are plenty of people in this world sadly that frequently do. We never want the children to forget that, to take food for granted, and travelling together has been an opportunity to reinforce this message.

The other benefit to travelling together as a family is the opportunity to be curious about new foods. We want the kids to embrace differences in people, cultures, and foods, to remain curious and open-minded, accepting that we do not know everything and there are always more opportunities to learn from others. Trying new dishes, new flavour combinations, and observing local customs by eating with our hands or chopsticks are fun experiences to be enjoyed and not feared.

Cooking as Comprehensive Education

Sampling new foods in foreign places is always a subtle way to embrace this message in a fun and enjoyable way. Cooking together has always been something we have enjoyed as a family, but now we have more time to do it together. Our 8-year-old has developed more and more confidence in the kitchen, her love of food fuelling her motivation to learn to cook for herself.

With time in the day, she is frequently able to experiment with new flavour combinations for our smoothie bowl breakfasts or teach herself how to make bean chilli following a recipe she has found on the internet. Our 5-year-old is developing a keen interest too, frequently getting involved in kneading the bread dough, chopping the vegetables for a salad, or stirring the porridge. Food preparation is something we do three times per day, every day, and so there is always good opportunity for them to get hands on and learn.

By investing the time in them whilst they are young, we are trying to carve out an understanding of how to nourish and feed themselves properly as adults. I don’t want them to be in the position of many people I knew at university, who simply didn’t know how to cook for themselves and were frightened of the process. They had not been taught it at home, and they clearly hadn’t learned at school.

Cooking is one big learning opportunity.

Suddenly finding themselves away from home and being expected to feed themselves, they either stepped up to the mark or existed on takeaways and ready-meals. I want our children to be curious about food, to enjoy cooking for themselves and others, and to enjoy the food they create. It is an essential element to life, and one we should not take for granted.

Cooking is one big learning opportunity. Measuring, weighing, and adapting proportions teaches them the fundamentals of maths in a practical setting: geometry and measures, ratio and proportion, mental arithmetic, and large number recognition. Searching for a recipe incorporates analytical skills, whilst reading, understanding, and following the instructions of the recipe requires strengthening of literacy skills.

Developing an understanding of the cooking process develops foundational science knowledge: the process by which water becomes a gas when boiled, which ingredients in a cake work to bind, to sweeten, to raise the cake, and how the heat of the oven affects this process. Discussing the macro and micronutrients of a meal and how to achieve a balanced plate further develops this knowledge of science and how our bodies function.

Preparing the Next Generation

They can also develop their dexterity and coordination through learning to safely use the kitchen equipment. It is these more abstract, hands-on experiences that come with not only the most fun but also the greatest learning opportunities in the home education world.

It is difficult to know how the food landscape will look in 10 to 15 years’ time when the kids are old enough to venture into the world themselves. Will highly processed foods and fast food delivery services still be dominating the landscape, or will a move back to simple, home-cooked meals have made a revival in order to get a grip on deteriorating health metrics in the population?

It is difficult for me to influence this, but as a parent I can help guide our children by modelling for them how I want them to behave. A huge benefit from stepping away from the school system has been in creating the time and space to put more attention into this. If Jimmy and I help the kids learn how to cook, teach them how to shop for proper, fresh ingredients, to eat seasonally and concentrate on the valuable nutrients that are required to make a balanced meal, then I feel we will have fulfilled at least some of our job as parents.

I do not profess to be a food saint. We have frequently fallen short on our goals: to avoid all fast or highly processed foods, to not fuel our emotions with sugar, to eat less on the go. But we are under as much pressure as the next family, the food environment requires great willpower to say no, and frequent travel often makes it more challenging. To seek perfection is usually futile and often sends the wrong message to the children anyway.

Instead, I am satisfied if we continue to carve out the right food environment, as much as we can, at home. To generate in our kids, the next generation, the responsibility to eat well, to eat responsibly and sustainably, and to use this as a platform to create meaningful connections with others. If they understand how to nourish both themselves and their loved ones, then there is some hope that with this message they can create change for the better in the world.