The #1 Thing That Should Not Be True

We live in a world jam-packed with knowledge—it’s at our fingertips in the blink of an eye. Personally, I miss the days of encyclopedias, but we’ll save that for another time. Getting back on track here, these days you don’t need to remain ignorant about any topic. A question pops in your head, go online to find your answer. Bam! You learned something.

It’s great, right? Of course! It’s hugely beneficial to be able to get yourself out of the dark about things. Knowledge is power. However, there’s a basic aspect of life that too many kids, for whatever reason, do remain in the dark about. And either we parents haven’t felt the need to pass along the knowledge, or our kids weren’t listening when we did. In this particular case, it’s probably the former.

So, here it is. The #1 thing that should not be true is…kids not knowing where food comes from.

Being a farm kid, maybe I take certain things for granted—but some things in life just seem obvious. Still, when it comes to food, that’s simply not the case.

I believe this problem is a bit regional. For example, if you live in warm climates where avocado fields are the norm, chances are pretty good you know that avocados grow on trees. Or if you grew up in the mighty Dairy State, you know how many products are made from cow’s milk: butter, yogurt, cheese, etc. This information is part of your daily life; it has soaked into your knowledge base.

Unfortunately, if you have tunnel vision about what’s in the food-iverse, you’ll miss out on so many very delicious flavors. There’s so much more!

All adults, whether we’re parents or not, need to recognize the importance of building a solid foundation for the self-health education of the next generation. We need to teach them where their food comes from—and it’s super easy to do.

A good friend tells the story of her young daughter asking where the bacon she was eating came from. Right away my friend explained that bacon comes from pigs, and she told her daughter to say, “Thank you, pig, for giving us this food to eat.” Though her daughter was too young to get into the discussion of the pig’s life from babyhood to processing plant, my friend gave her the age-appropriate knowledge she was looking for. A great start for her food education. Well done, my friend.

What else can you do?

• Ask your kids to help write down the grocery list. Then take them shopping and talk about the foods you put in the cart. Ask them questions like, “Do all nuts grow on trees?” If they aren’t sure, help them find the answers.
• Take your kids to a local farm. If the farm raises animals and grows food, you can cross two bits of knowledge off your list. Many CSA (community supported agriculture) farms love for their members to help with weeding and harvesting. Let your kids pull a carrot up from the dirt or eat a fresh green bean with their feet planted in the soil that nurtured it. Visit the animals and the beehives and talk about the food they provide. Explain how the chickens provide eggs for breakfast and later on the meat in their favorite bowl of chicken noodle soup.
• As your kids get a little older, let them help you in the kitchen with things like chopping up vegetables. (A great resource on kitchen basics for kids is The Nourishing Traditions Cookbook for Children by Suzanne Gross and Sally Fallon Morell.) When the time is right, teach them how to prepare their favorite meal from start to finish. Let them look at the recipe, make a list of the ingredients to buy, store them properly, and finally put it all together. Each stop offers another great opportunity to discuss the individual components of the dish and learn how they came to be in your very own kitchen.

Even if you aren’t a parent, you can invite any neighborhood kids you know to explore your backyard garden and talk to them about your favorites. You could even ask them what they’d like to see growing and then plant it the following season. What’s that saying? “It takes a village to raise a child.”  It’s in our best interest to have a well-informed crop of humans coming up behind us.

There are many things in life that just shouldn’t be true, and you may argue that some are bigger than this. But I happen to think educating each new generation about valuable, lifesaving traditions such as food knowledge is essential. It’s the only way we can be certain that the art form of growing a healthy food supply doesn’t slip through the cracks.

Paula Widish

Paula Widish, author of Trophia: Simple Steps to Everyday Self-Health, is a freelance writer and self-healther. She loves nothing more than sharing tidbits of information she discovers with others. (Actually, she loves her family more than that—and probably bacon too.) Paula has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Public Relations and is a Certified Professional Life Coach through International Coach Academy.

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