Food for thought... How do you eat?

How we eat as children forms the bedrock of our attitudes, thoughts and relationship to food for life. Thats a grand statement but it's true.

In this way, as parents, what we feed our children and what we teach them about eating is crucial.  I often think I'm not doing too bad with giving my children packaged snacks for morning tea, the odd desserts, hot chips or takeaway once a week, sometimes twice... We all eat differently and have different views about what is acceptable and healthy. In today's busy society finding time to cook or source good, healthy food is difficult. The reality is that it's our lack of time that leads to us eating the highly processed, convenience foods that replace what would have once been homemade snacks made with real ingredients.

This change from homemade food to processed convenience snacks is not only increasing our sugar and carbohydrate consumption, contributing alongside inactivity to obesity, heart disease and diabetes but it's teaching our children to value these unhealthy, but so easily accessible snacks in place of more nutritious, natural foods. It's just so easy to buy foods instead of make them...

The Daily Bread is a Project by Gregg Segal that is a thought-provoking series of photos showcasing what children from all over the world have eaten in one week.

Gregg Segal says: 

"In 2015, Cambridge University conducted an exhaustive study, identifying countries with the healthiest diets in the world. 9 of the top 10 countries are in Africa, where vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, grains are staples and meals are homemade, a stark contrast to the US where nearly 60% of the calories we consume come from ultraprocessed foods and only 1% come from vegetables. As globalization alters our relationship to food, I’m making my way around the world, asking kids to keep a journal of everything they eat in a week. Once the week is up, I make a portrait of the child with the food arranged around them. I’m focusing on kids because eating habits, which form when we’re young, last a lifetime and often pave the way to chronic health problems like diabetes, heart disease and colon cancer.

I’ve been encouraged to find regions and communities where slow food will never be displaced by junk food, where home cooked meals are the bedrock of family and culture, where love and pride are sensed in the aromas of broths, stews and curries. When the hand that stirs the pot is mom or dad, grandma or grandma, kids are healthier. The deeper goal of Daily Bread is to be a catalyst for change and link to a growing, grassroots community that is moving the needle on diet."

You can see more of these amazing portraits via this link here. Make sure you have a look they are absolutely intriguing!

The idea of bringing our community back to eating good, wholesome, homemade food is our mission at FoodSt and this photographic project just confirms it's importance. Why can't we find a better way to feed our community? Maybe we should all challenge ourselves to setup a photo like this for our kids and understand just how well we are really doing...?

FoodSt makes real, homemade food available in local communities. Our food is cooked with love by mums, dads and grandparents in your local community. www.FOODST.com.au