The aim of the project “Food for thought - European chances and challenges“ is to help students to become active and responsible European citizens and to encourage them to cooperate with other countries, to exchange ideas actively and to tackle problems together. On the one hand the popular topic “body awareness” is highly motivating for our students - on the other hand they prefer an increasingly unhealthy lifestyle primarily marked by unhealthy eating habits resulting in growing numbers of obesity and diet-related illnesses. Last but not least this unhealthy lifestyle affects their achievements in school. This problem has been observed but all participating schools and it has been confirmed by various renowned studies. Therefore we decided to tackle this problem together and make it the key focus of our project. The project wants students to actively deal with the importance of a healthy way of life for their everyday lives and create awareness as to food and its origins. Through the joint work of the participating schools the students will soon realise that they are not merely dealing with a national, but a larger, i.e. European, problem which needs to be solved through actively collecting, exchanging, and realising ideas together. Thus all participants will benefit from each other. The project aims to show the students how they can take responsibility for themselves and for society by taking the role of 'multipliers': the knowledge that they will have acquired in the project they will pass on to others and this will have an impact not only on their everyday lives (including school) but also on their families, school and local community, too. All in all four schools from Germany, Romania, Czech Republic, and Poland with a total number of 300 participants will take part in the project. For our common project we have already set up an interactive platform (Yammer) which will display all our results and activities during the project: multilingual recipes supported by pictures and videos, documentaries, video clips about our different projects (GM food, nutritional values, ingredients and nutrients, conventional vs. sustainable production of food), a nutritional assistant etc. But also after the project future learning groups will continuously use and add to this platform and it will grow steadily. Recipes can be tried out and followed, new recipes can be added, video clips and documentations can be incorporated into school lessons. Moreover, our project will be innovative in that we will provide all contents on different levels of difficulty thus realising inclusive education and learning. Furthermore we will create an illustrated cook book with step-by-step instructions to sensitise students for healthy eating in an illustrative manner, write diet plans, visit an organic farm and the conventional meat factory to look at differences, advantages and disadvantages of such ways of food production, a nutritionist and a professional cook will be invited, and there will be projects on the ingredients and nutritional values in our food and their impact on the body, and last but not least, we will develop the concept of an annual "Health Week" at all our schools. All these activities serve to motivate the students to reflect on their eating habits and to create more awareness in them. More importantly, we have designed the activities with a focus on sustainability: students will be able to use the results of the project in various contexts in the future and to pass on their knowledge from the project to others. Finally, their media skills - as well as their language competence, and their intercultural communicative competence - will be improved.
The students were able to achieve an awareness of healthy and sustainable nutrition because throughout the whole project they developed and cooked healthy alternatives to popular and traditional dishes. In this context they were shown a responsible behaviour as customers when buying the necessary ingredients (avoiding packaging, buying regional and seasonal products, all biologically grown) By producing video- and pictorial tutorials for students with special needs they also developed an awareness for diversity and different needs in an inclusive society. When working in the kitchen the students learned to choose the right kitchen utensils and how to work safely with them. They also learned important rules for kitchen hygiene and confidence regarding table manners - all of this being very important in their later lives. Meeting students from other countries led the students to experience and appreciate cultural diversity, especially in the fields of nutrition and culinary culture - a valuable contribution to their personal development in a multicultural and interconnected world. Sports activities, talks given by a professional athlete and nutritionists, and health checks added to a comprehensive approach towards a healthy lifestyle. The meetings in Germany, Poland and Czech Republic furthermore helped students to understand cultural differences between western and eastern Europe. Not only did the 60 participating students and teachers at each meeting profit from the project. The students also created an inclusive cookbook containing regional and seasonal healthy recipes in the languages of the participating countries, furthermore they put up a homepage with recipes and nutritional advice as well as an Instagram account.