Author: Tang Xinzi, a Chinese mother living in Japan.
Not long ago, I attended the "Academy Festival" of my daughter's primary school (the Japanese campus is similar to the "Open Day" in China). During the activity, 1000 copies of rice cakes were made by fifth-grade children under the leadership of teachers, which especially surprised and moved me: the glutinous rice used for making rice cakes was planted, cultivated and harvested by fifth-grade students under the leadership of teachers this spring!
The raw materials are produced by themselves, the rice cakes are made by themselves, and the taste is prepared by the children under the leadership of teachers and parents who are volunteers. Participation in the whole process can not only help children learn knowledge, but also cultivate children's heart of cherishing and thanking food more completely.
In schools or families in Japan, there are many activities with the theme of "food" (so-called "food education" training). This doesn't just mean simple table manners and nutritional collocation of food:
It is unscientific to encourage children to eat fast and well.
Japanese schools attach great importance to children's physical exercise. When it comes to food, children are required to ensure a balanced, normal and regular diet, ensure food safety, and develop a eating habit of chewing slowly.
The picture below shows the lunch menu of my daughter's Japanese primary school last February. In order to let parents know the contents of their children's lunch at school, Japanese kindergartens or school "feeding centers" will distribute the children's "lunch menu" for next month to parents 1-2 weeks in advance. This "lunch menu" includes such contents: the contents of lunch every day every month, the types and quantities of ingredients used in these lunches, and the amount of various nutrients contained in them are all marked in detail.
After the children's mothers get the school lunch menu, they can use it as a reference to decide the breakfast and dinner menu for their children at home. According to the nutritionist's suggestion in the school's "feeding center", it is required to eat at least 30 kinds of food according to the nutritional requirements of calories, carbohydrates, fat, protein and vitamins every day. (Reply to "436" to view the WeChat article "Why do Japanese attach so much importance to children's breakfast?"
For China's parents, the most noteworthy sentence is "chew slowly". I remember my daughter was about three years old and went back to China for kindergarten for half a year. During that time, my daughter went home to eat like a robber, for fear that she would not eat fast enough. It seems that she is a good child only by eating fast. In fact, this is very unscientific. Just considering that children eat too fast and easily swallow dates, food is not fully chewed and swallowed in the stomach, which will bring burden to the stomach and cause indigestion. How can we fully absorb nutrition?
Children do it themselves and feel the fun of food.
Eat well and have fun. Japanese mothers often fiddle with menu patterns, even containers for vegetables, occasionally change the way and place of eating, and even play some background music during meal time to create a pleasant dining environment. All this stems from a Japanese belief that the food you eat will be happily absorbed and become a part of your body as long as it pleases your mouth and stomach as much as possible.
Eat happily and cherish it. The fate between people is rare, and so is the fate between people and food. Think about that grain of rice, it will take a year of hard work to finally enter your rice bowl, not someone else's. What a thing to cherish and appreciate!
The most direct and effective way to cultivate children's "happiness" and "cherish" is to let children do it themselves and experience the process by themselves. Like the example given at the beginning of the article, children learn a lot in practice that they can't learn in the text: understanding and loving other creatures or plants in nature; Gratitude for food; Team spirit. Wait a minute. All this is a process of cultivating children to enrich their hearts.
▋ Class assignment: Go to the fish market to interview employees.
When it comes to "caring for the environment" and "protecting the environment", our first thought may be not littering. In fact, it is not enough just to "stop littering". In the "food education" training of Japanese children, the love for the environment also includes "reducing waste"-not only reducing food waste, but also reducing energy waste.
At present, a slogan put forward by the "feeding center" of Japanese schools for children's school lunch is "real estate sales". In other words, we advocate using local raw materials for children's school lunch, which can save manpower, reduce food costs and ensure food freshness. More importantly, it can reduce energy waste and exhaust emissions in the recycling process-these are all part of caring for the environment.