Should cookery be on the national curriculum?

At a time when millions of pounds are being spent on public health campaigns in the 'fight against obesity' and Weight Watchers are rolling out programs for teenagers and kids, the government is looking to drop cookery classes in schools as part of a general review of the National Curriculum. Under the previous government, the Licence to Cook programme included 24 hours of practical cookery skills for all pupils aged 11-14 and included training for teachers and funding for kitchen equipment to be installed in schools.  Now the tide has turned and despite the growing obsession over child obesity the current government are looking to ditch cookery and focus on 'core subjects' like Mathematics and English instead.


In a recent survey of schoolchildren, most didn't know that burgers were made from cows and that fish fingers had anything to do with animals that live in the sea. How can we expect the future generations to make healthy food choices when they have no idea where the food comes from and how to prepare it? Surely cookery is one of the most 'core' subjects there is? The  best way to show children how to have a healthy, balanced relationship with food and by consequence a healthy, balanced weight is to focus on teaching all youngsters basic cookery skills so that by the time they leave school they know how to take a few, simple, fresh ingredients and turn them into a satisfying, nutritious meal.


Imagine schools with a basic kitchen in each classroom: children learning how to cut, measure, weigh and mix ingredients (lots of mathematics there) and finding out about where ingredients come from, what happens to them when they are cooked together, learning to read a recipe and even writing some of their own (lots of English, Biology and Chemistry too). Imagine a National Curriculum where each child leaves school with a good grounding in cookery. When you know how to make a basic soup, a stew, a stir fry, an omelette and a pudding you are pretty much set for life.  You can decide what tastes, textures and quantities you are hungry for, you can ensure you eat food you enjoy and take pride in your work. None of the above take any longer top make than heating up a ready meal or popping out for a takeaway and with a bit of planning, they can be much cheaper. 


I recently spent a couple of hours on a Sunday morning holding a cookery workshop for 20 kids aged 2 to 10 years. As part of a larger event on recycling and using scrap to create things I went for simple recipes based on leftover bread. We made an Italian recipe called Poor Man's Meatballs - delicious, golden, crunchy, cheesy bread balls - and an easy bread & butter pudding. The children had a great time and really got stuck in, even the very little ones. They all enjoyed devouring their home-made goodies and took away a little bit of cookery knowledge that I hope will stick with them for many years.

I hope the government review will realise just how important cookery is for children's health and wellbeing and make it part of the National Curriculum. In the meantime, get your kinds into the kitchen and have fun making Poor Man's Meatballs with them. Even a 2 year old  can enjoy squishing some bread and rolling it into balls. You will be teaching them valuable skills for the future.


If you'd like Audrey aka the Kitchen Fairy to come and cook with you and your children, get in touch and drop me an email audrey[at]beyondchocolate[dot]co[dot]uk

More about Maggie goes on a diet...

I couldn't agree more with Gretel's post. So all I wanted to add is to let you know that there's a discussion on Amazon which you can add your thoughts to if this appalls you as much as it does us. There is also a Facebook page campaigning for this book to be removed from sale, which you can like if you want to add support.

If anyone wants a book which offers a really helpful way of supporting children to have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies, I can very highly recommend "Preventing Childhood Eating Problems: A Practical, Positive Approach to Raising Children Free of Food & Weight Conflicts" by Jane R. Hirschmann and Lela Zaphiropoulos.

Maggie, aged 14, goes on a diet

Gretel Hallet, is a Trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich - perfect for beginners to experience the core principles of Beyond Chocolate and equally great as a refresher for any Beyond Chocolater. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate or her workshops, get in touch with Gretel.

A book encouraging young children to lose weight will be released in the US later this year.

‘Maggie Goes on a Diet’, by Paul Kramer, tells a story of a 14-year-old overweight girl who - according to the blurb - “is transformed from being extremely overweight and insecure to a normal sized girl who becomes the school soccer star”.

Maggie is shown as a chubby girl looking into the mirror. Staring back is a slimmer version of herself, holding up a tiny pink dress.

Aloha Publishers LLC, pitch the book on their website as an inspirational tale for children.

They add: “Through time, exercise and hard work, Maggie becomes more and more confident and develops a positive self image.”

There is so much wrong with this book that I hardly know where to start.

The eponymous heroine of this book is not apparently celebrated for anything that she is or does before she goes on the diet – losing weight is credited with making her more confident and giving her a more ‘positive self-image’. Not only that, but she becomes the star of her school soccer team. I know of no earthly reason why a chubbier child can’t have confidence in him/herself and/or be a star on a soccer team. Dieting isn’t guaranteed to suddenly change a diffident, shy, un-sporty person into a self-confident, successful sporty one. What it is guaranteed to do is set poor Maggie up for a lifetime of self-loathing, yo-yo weight gain and loss and associated health problems in the future. Maggie may well be a thoroughly delightful young lady who loves her family, is good with smaller children, has a reading age higher than her own age, enjoys cycling round her neighbourhood, has a wonderful singing voice – you name it, but Maggie isn’t praised for any of the things that are truly praise-worthy in her character. The only focus this book has is on the fat that Maggie has on her body and how that isn’t acceptable and how she must get rid of it.

And who decides what's overweight anyway? We are all different body shapes and sizes and what may be too much on one person is just right on another. Also as we grow up, the distribution of fat on our bodies changes and that's a natural process that shouldn't been messed up by dieting.

Maggie is FOURTEEN YEARS OLD. 14 years old. Still two years away from even the earliest age she can be considered an adult in England. At her age I was a slightly feral rather tomboyish girl who enjoyed competing with boys at climbing trees and never wore dresses, particularly NOT tiny pink ones ... I know we can all look back at our childhoods with rose tinted spectacles, but really a child of 14 shouldn’t be put on a diet – I don’t often use imperatives, but this is one I’d use very happily. A 14 year old girl should NOT be put on a diet or be made to be worry about what she looks like either – if I had my way, no woman would worry about it either. If Maggie wants to play soccer, then let her play soccer, regardless of her size or gender. Encourage her to play and enjoy playing – and don’t whatever you do mention her shape, size or weight because it really doesn’t matter.

This book is aimed at teenage girls. As any eating disorders organisation would tell you, concerns about weight start younger and younger with children barely out of nursery school worrying about being fat. I support books for teenage girls that explain puberty, sexual relationships of all sorts and how to cope with the stresses of exams – but under no circumstances would I support a book aimed at getting girls of 14 to go on diets. I really think that the current obsession with obesity has gone much too far when it causes publishers to think that books like this will be successful.

I hope for Maggie and all the other Maggies out there that this book will be a massive flop and that they can enjoy their childhoods unencumbered by worries about the fat on their bodies – and by how they look in general. I hope that teenage girls can learn how to become women without the attendant obsession with body shape and size and current belief that we all need to be on diets and re-shaping our bodies with frequent exercise. I hope that girls of all ages can learn how to enjoy moving in whatever way suits them best without linking it to weight loss. I hope that girls can enjoy their food without worrying about calories, fat etc.

I am very glad that I never encountered a book like this when I was 14 years old.

Beyond Chocolate and Children

My son is 16. When I started Beyond Chocolate he wasn’t quite 6. When he was a toddler and through his first four or so years I was obsessed (it’s the only words that described the way I behaved) with making sure he had a good, healthy, wholesome diet. He never ate sweets or chocolate. I wouldn’t have dreamed of giving him anything with artificial colours or flavors. Fizzy drinks were out, fruit juice was only a rare treat. And on the other hand I gave him rice cakes in the car when he was bored. He ate his wonderfully nourishing home-made sandwiches while watching Postman Pat and this curious and spirited little vegetarian boy loved nothing better than to play ‘butchers’ whenever his Zia (aka Audrey) came over to visit! Meanwhile I was yo-yoing on and off diets constantly and eating for Britain and the rest of Europe in between.

When he was two and a half he once asked the man behind the bar at the beach cafe if he could “please have the blue ice-cream, the one with artificial colours and flavours in it”!

By the time he was nine I had created Beyond Chocolate and he had discovered the ‘Eat whatever you want’ principle. He didn’t take much persuading. Chocolate, crisps, Haribo, cake, biscuits…. he couldn’t get enough of them. I knew that taking the brakes off and allowing myself to eat what I wanted had worked for me but I cannot describe how scary it was to do the same with my children. By then he had a little sister, nearly five years younger.

I watched him put on weight and eat sweet stuff seemingly without any sign of reaching satisfaction point.

I gave them carte blanche in the supermarket and they bought junk upon junk upon junk.

I stocked up with piles of chocolate…. and it was all eaten. Hundreds (literally) of packs of crisps and they all went.

This went on for longer than I felt reasonable. I was prepared for a few weeks. But months… and months… At times I faltered (without telling them or changing anything noticeable!). I told myself I was crazy. My husband had ‘serious talks’ with me. How could I do this to my kids? It may work for my clients but these were our children we were talking about and he was not at all sure. Our friends raised their eyebrows and shook their heads (the polite ones!). Some felt they just had to speak up.

I gave the children mixed messages. Yes, eat what you want. It’s fine. As long as you’re hungry and you sit down at the table… And when they looked all innocent and said yes of course they were hungry, only minutes after dinner, I questioned them and doubted them and even though I eventually said ‘yes, they could have it, my body language was screaming NOOOOOOO!

And I was terrified as I saw Jasper put on weight and I pretended that I wasn’t.

I stuck with it. I read Preventing Childhood Eating Problems - A practical, positive approach to raising children free of food and weight conflicts by Hirshmann and Zaphiropoulos to reassure myself. It was very, very reassuring. It’s a great book.

I stopped asking if he was hungry (he ALWAYS said yes anyway!). I just kept reminding him to put it on a plate, sit down and focus.

Gradually, very gradually his attitude to food changed. After going to Costco and buying boxes of chocolate bars (Mars, KitKat, Crunchie etc) he stopped finding them all that interesting. He hasn't had a chocolate bar in months. In fact, as he reads this over my shoulder, he tells me he hasn’t has a chocolate bar in years!

After aeons of saying yes to crisps and pretzels and peanuts, he stopped asking and lost interest; they were no longer special.

He started asking to taste my luxury chocolates from Rococo, Marcolini, Valrohna a few years ago he asked for a small box of good quality chocolate for Easter rather than the huge Cadbury’s concoctions he’s been attracted to before. He'd go and stay with his grandparents in the south of France and come back with a box of Jean Luc Pele's amazing creations.

He stopped overeating at mealtimes and started leaving food on his plate.

Slowly, slowly he lost weight.

Today he is a slender, healthy young man who has a passion for good food. His favourites are things like Godminster cheddar, home made pickles, salami with white truffle, organic, dry cured bacon, fois gras and salt licorice. Having said that he’s not above the occasional pack of Doritos, a visit to KFC or a bag of M&Ms.

His relationship with food is balanced, healthy and so is he.

And now I’m watching my daughter follow the same path. As she learns to manage her desire to eat when she’s bored, to have chocolate because it’s there, because it tastes nice. And since I’ve been here before I’m more confident. We talk about it and she understands what it’s all about even when she can't or doesn't want to change how or what she's eating. I know she’ll get there in her own time and I know for certain that putting her on a diet or restricting what she eats in any way would be the best way to guarantee that aged 30 she'd be overweight, struggling with her eating! And she'd look back at photos of herself and would probably think "I looked lovely, a little puppy fat that's all, if only she had let me be!'.

Teaching our children to trust themselves, to make healthy food choices, to listen to their bodies is a process. And the key for me is that they learn to choose. I could have told them what to eat. I could have continued (as I started) to ban certain foods, to focus on their weight, to make it an issue. Instead I decided to teach them how to be discerning. By giving them information, talking and listening, I empowered them to decide for themselves so that for them healthy eating isn’t about deprivation or being good it’s something they do because they want to, because actually it’s all they know. They know about the reasons we eat when we're not hungry. They know what it's like to want something and choose not to have it. Not because it's not allowed but because they know the difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger. They know about the impact of different foods on their bodies, not just because we've read about it or talked about it but because they've experimented with it themselves. Importantly, I protected them from the prejudice and mis-information all around them about 'obesity'; I refused to let them be weighed and measured at school. And most important of all; I practiced what I preached. I modeled the behaviours I wanted them to emulate. It wasn’t always easy but I stuck with it and I still do.

One of my primary goals as a parent is to make sure my children grow up feeling good about their bodies and the way they eat, healthy and fit; informed and empowered. We’ve had so many requests over the years for a Mother & Daughter workshop; if you have a daughter and you’d like to come on a workshop with her, to find out more about how you can work on your own relationship with food and support her to grow up with a healthy and balanced approach to food and her body, click HERE and let us know.

Bariatric Surgery - Is it the answer?

I have just come home from a BOSPA meeting. BOSPA is an organisation that provides support to people who are thinking about or have undergone bariatric surgery; gastric bands, bypasses or sleeves (and other less common procedures). I was invited as a guest speaker this evening and it was real privilege.

I am aware, as I write, that before tonight I had lots of judgments about people who choose to have surgery to lose weight. Actually no, that's not true. I didn't, I had judgments about the doctors who offer the surgery. I felt angry that people are being put under the knife before being offered tools and support to change their relationship with food (other than diets!) which might mean they could avoid such major invasive surgery. How many people I wonder, who opt for bariatric surgery, have been offered the opportunity to work on their overeating in a supportive and positive way? How many of them have talked to other people who understand and hear them with compassion about what it's like to live with body hatred, feeling bad about themselves and stuffing those feelings down with yet another pack of crisps? How many of them really know, before they change their digestive system, sometimes irreversibly, that with support and care and encouragement, they could transform their relationship with food and stop overeating...

And this evening I saw things in a different light. Whatever my views about surgery and the alternatives, I met people who have been thrown a life raft. Their stories moved me and I felt a huge amount of respect and admiration for every one of them. They know, as I know, that the surgery offers them a tool, one way to manage their eating and they also know that there's lots of work to do to change their relationship with food once they've undergone the procedure. That the surgery alone is not enough. Without making changes the weight comes back on, just like it always does. When we don't know how to manage the reasons we overeat, when we don't know how to deal with it when every bone in our body wants to eat, when the urge to fill ourselves up with something, anything, is so great, so overwhelming, that it feels as if it controls every fibre of our being, then even a gastric bypass cannot keep the pounds at bay.

The surgery is not THE answer and it does make an enormous difference to some people's lives. It is so easy to judge, to think that people who opt for surgery are taking the easy option. That is definitely not the case. Only those who have been there understand the utter desperation, misery and anguish that accompanies being overweight and/or yoyoing up and down year after year, for decades. The diets fail us, the dietitians, nutritionists, doctors, therapists... they all fail us. None of them offer a realistic, lifelong solution. So where do we go when we reach the end of the road? With stone upon stone to lose?

Beyond Chocolate offers people hope, not just because we look at our relationship with food from every angle; what we eat, how we eat, why we eat... we look at emotional eating and body image, we deal with exercise and healthy eating. And we do all that with kindness and compassion. We don't patronise people - we know that they know everything there is to know about food and diets what they 'should' or shouldn't eat. They could probably write a book about it! We don't just offer a one dimensional fix. We show people exactly how to change the way they eat in a way that is sustainable and real. Gradually, one step at a time. And sadly Beyond Chocolate and it's cousins (the few that exist out there) are not offered to people by GPs because we have not yet had the financial good fortune to invest in research to 'prove' that what we do works. While GPs reluctantly or happily refer people to the good old slimming clubs (who can afford the glossy brochures and so called research showing how much weight people lose - but not how much they invariably regain!), we remain the prerogative of those who can afford to pay and have the good fortune to come across us or hear about us through word of mouth or on the internet. We're working on it! Slowly but surely we are gaining ground. We'll get there.

We are committed and passionate about empowering women (and men) to know and trust their bodies and to taste the freedom that comes from a healthy balanced relationship with food. And that means anyone, however they choose to support themselves, including bariatric surgery.

I am so grateful to have been invited to speak at the BOSPA meeting tonight. I left feeling moved, honored and much better informed and with huge admiration for all the participants and Georgina, the woman who runs such a supportive and encouraging group.