Their first steps in the world of food. In the kitchen with the kids by Rosalia Cavalieri Essayist and Full Professor of Philosophy and Theory of Languages at the University of Messina
1. FOOD CULTURE AND THE EDUCATION OF TASTE
Academic disciplines have never given food culture and the education of taste the place they deserve, either ignoring such topics entirely, or viewing them with an unconstructive, unhelpful attitude. This has led to their exclusion from curricula, which display a lack of interest in the wide-ranging, varied world of “material culture”, an area of knowledge whose importance has been seriously underestimated, also due to its links with daily life and the physical aspects of the human condition. These aspects are often taken for granted or considered marginal compared to activities and knowledge of a theoretical nature, which, as such, are deemed to possess a “higher” cultural and intellectual status, on a par with beliefs, knowledge, myths or laws. Nonetheless, in recent times, nutrition has become the object of more systematic study, not necessarily linked to nutrition and medicine, to the point that today we can talk of the broad field known as Food Studies (see Anderson, Brady, Levkoe, 2016), which deals with the food “system” in all its possible forms, as both a material and cultural product. So, while we have clearly rediscovered the undeniable value of food and everything that revolves around it, and have become more aware of how we eat, it is also true that as consumers we remain profoundly ignorant (cf. Cavalieri, 2020). Teaching about taste and the conscious pleasure that it can give us, becoming aware of how important the act of consuming food is,
by means of a serious, systematic, solid cultural education, which starts with know-how and bodily experience, is now a necessity, especially if we consider the effects that the way we eat can have on our well-being and that of the environment. This process should start early, in infancy, in order to provide children with meaningful experiences aimed at promoting a conscious, healthy, balanced and fun approach to an activity that is an integral part of our daily life and a chance to express our intelligence: eating and knowing how to eat. I would thus like to examine how important it is to involve children in the preparation and transformation of food through cookery, so that spending time in the kitchen becomes a significant opportunity for their education in food and taste. 2. EDUCATING BY COOKING
First of all, cooking is one of the most species-specific activities of the human animal, whose origins take us back to our ancestor Homo erectus, who lived approximately one and a half million years ago (cf. Wrangram, 2009). Over time, cooking has become one of our most frequently repeated actions, an ordinary, everyday activity, which has played a central role in our history. It involves a process of transforming raw materials that are not always edible or good to eat into nutritious, tasty dishes which may themselves be a significant source of pleasure. Indeed, cooking was invented in order to generate pleasure, to increase and prolong the enjoyment of eating. However, it is also true that socio-economic changes in recent decades have also progressively and profoundly changed our relationship with the preparation of food and with the time dedicated to cooking and consuming it. This is especially true in Western societies,
INVOLVING CHILDREN IN COOKING IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF PROMOTING FOOD CULTURE AND THE EDUCATION OF TASTE, AS WELL AS A WAY OF ENGENDERING APPRECIATION FOR THE ACT OF EATING 20
where continuous transformations have also changed the way we eat. Also due to a chronic lack of time, stress and the increasingly frenetic pace of our daily life, we have ended up cooking less, turning to the all-too-available yet low-quality ready-to-eat, practical, quick foods prepared by the food industry and commercial catering, deluding ourselves that true emancipation has been achieved, especially by women, traditionally the custodians of culinary know-how. In reality, all we have done is impoverish our sense of taste, our social relationships, including those in the family, and even our health: by failing to “keep the home fires burning”, we have ended up eating badly and chaotically; often on our own, we hurriedly shovel down industrial dishes, stripping food of its value and significance. A cultural food education project should envisage the need to restore to the kitchen that ancient prestige that made it an all-round learning environment, an environment in which children also had a place, preparing and sharing food, where they could learn to “appreciate [food] as a precious gift, and to use it while respecting the environment, the work of others and nature” (cf. Balzanò, 2016, p. 16). Involving children in cooking activities is thus an important step in promoting food culture and taste education, and in enhancing interaction with food, but it is also much more. In addition to being educational in the widest sense for children, cookery also gives the whole family a chance to engage in an activity which has become increasingly rare in the contemporary world. Despite having grown in popularity on TV and social networks, cookery is increasingly neglected in our homes. 3. CHILDREN AND COOKERY
We rarely consider the kitchen as a place where children can acquire maturity and experience, or see it as a learning environment, nor do we think that the selection, preparation and shared consumption of cooked foods are
