Nutrition and education are closely interlinked. Good nutrition during teenage is important for healthy growth and development and schools are the natural development zone for nutrition education, one of the main social contexts in which lifestyles are developed as 1.they reach most children 2.they have qualified personnel to teach and guide 3.they reach students at a critical age, when eating habits and attitudes are being established and 4.they provide opportunities to practice healthy eating and food safety in school curricula and through the sale of food on their premises. We should expect schools to teach students about food:where it comes from and how it affects our bodies and our health and how we can improve both. So, food has to be taught as a course for many reasons: •Teenagers feel they are free to eat whatever they want–do not listen to family, school and peers are more important •Junk food is available and conquering •Students spend a big part of their daytime at school •“a healthy mind in a healthy body”: if we teach and practice health through Physical Education for this, we have to teach and practice Food as well •School food economy is a big financial factor (canteens, restaurants, pocket money = let’s see where it goes and if it is worth it) •let’s put food education in schools because we value our children. The projects' objectives are:1.to research into what our students prefer eating at school today and how this affects their lives;using their favourite means of finding out about things, ICT, they will produce a database (videos, statistical data) to be analysed in all relevant subjects. The findings will be used to create, among others, a Food on Body Anatomy Board, and an ethical process of approaching food 2.to learn what their ancestors' food habits and their effects were, how we can transfer and adapt the best nutritional habits into modern school life, exchange them among partner countries and produce basic, healthy and simple recipes for school food favourites. 3.to create a European Food Ethos Course that will be both essential for the students' lives and attractive to them because it will involve themselves and their own skills and activities. Schools from Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey will be partners in this project.The total number of participants, students and teachers is 60 with students' ages from 13 to 17, which is also the main target group. The planned activities in our project are:1) Logo creation in partner schools, 2) short videos made by the students showing what they eat and explaining what it contains, their eating-in-school habits, 3)school events to announce the project objectives, in order to attract the local interest of all stakeholders 4)Creation of the project Website, with all information on the project goals, activities and outcomes, 5) questionnaires about present and past eating habits 6)research what they eat in each institution within the school curriculum subjects, 7) a Food & Body Anatomy Board 8) Creation of various easy eat-in-school recipes at partner schools, with a combination of past and present, into a Cookbook and E-book of Recipes, 9) Research and evaluation of regulations on School canteens & restaurants, 10) a Food Ethos Course draft to pilot test, 11)The FOOD ETHOS course in print and e-book, 12)Specific Dissemination Days, 13)a public Event to celebrate the Course, with a European banquet of all partner foods and of the course outcomes, as an homage to the Year of European Cultural Heritage. The methodology is based on a student-centred, peer-to-peer approach: τhe students will be the main actors in the development of the activities and in the accomplishment of the end products. They will form teams of workshops, make research, inform themselves and create educational material. They will collect data in order to make the Anatomy board and communicate with the students from the other partner schools in order to attain the proposed goals.Teachers will work in teams following a better execution of the activities, monitoring the students’ activities, working closely with the other teams of the project to follow the plan of the activities, thus ensuring the success of the project. The course is expected to reach a target group of more than 100 schools and 2000 beneficiaries, students, staff, parents, stakeholders. The potential longer term benefits for all participants can ensure that in future schools can make healthier choices and have access to whole, affordable, nutritious foods.Moreover, as 2018 is the Year of intangible European Cultural Heritage and Food is the most common commodity for any human and a basic feature of any cultural heritage, we want them to learn from the past in order to look forward to a better future. That is why we need to put food education back in European schools: because we value our students and their prospects for long, healthy, and happy lives.
Nutrition and education are closely interlinked. Good nutrition during teenage is important for healthy growth and development and schools are the natural development zone for nutrition education. So, food has to be taught as a course for many reasons. The objectives of the project which were achieved to the fullest extent after the completion of the program were: 1.to research into what our students prefer eating at school today and how this affects their lives;using their favourite means of finding out about things,ICT, they will produce a database (videos, statistical data) to be analysed in all relevant subjects. The findings used to create, among others, a Food on Body Anatomy Board,and an ethical process of approaching food 2.to learn what their ancestors' food habits and their effects were, how we can transfer and adapt the best nutritional habits into modern school life, exchange them among partnercountries and produce basic, healthy and simple recipes for school food favourites. 3.to create a European Food Ethos Course that will be both essential for the students' lives and attractive to them because it will involve themselves and their own skills and activities. Schools from Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey were the partners in this project. The students' ages which was the main target group, were from 13 to17. The activities that have taken place in our project are: 1) Logo creation in partner schools, 2) short videos made by the students showing what they eat and explaining what it contains, their eating-in-school habits, 3)school events to announce the project objectives, in order to attract the local interest of all stakeholders 4)Creation of the project Website, with all information on the project goals, activities and outcomes, 5) questionnaires about present and past eating habits 6)research what they eat in each institution within the school curriculum subjects, 7)a Food & Body Anatomy Board 8) Creation of various easy eat-in-school recipes at partner schools, with a combination of past and present, into a Cookbook and E-book of Recipes,9) Research and evaluation of regulations on School canteens & restaurants, 10) a Food Ethos Course draft to pilot test, 11)The FOOD ETHOS course in print and e-book,12)Specific Dissemination Days, 13) a public Event to celebrate the Course, with a European banquet of all partner foods and of the course outcomes, as an homage to the Year of European Cultural Heritage. The produced results of the project are: • the Food Ethos Course which is both in print and in online (e-platfom) • the recipe book which contains recipes from all countries. It includes the ingredients, the way they are prepared and their degree of difficulty. These recipes were prepared by the children themselves with the help of the adults in case the degree of difficulty was high. In this recipe book there is a whole chapter with recipes that have chocolate as one of the ingredients • a Food Anatomy body map that shows and describes foods that help different parts of the body. So it is a useful diet guide according to the needs of each individual • the website of the program (https://erasmusfeeds.weebly.com/) which includes all the results of the program in digital format. Of course, due to the website space, there is only a part of all the works of the students - partner schools. Many of these tasks are also available on school websites • questionnaires about the eating habits of the present and the past from which useful conclusions were drawn in presentations which are posted on our website The course is expected to reach a target group of more than 100 schools and 2000 beneficiaries, students, staff, parents, stakeholders. The potential longer term benefits for all participants can ensure that in future schools can make healthier choices and have access to whole, affordable, nutritious foods while students will become aware of healthy eating and will change their eating habits according to what we have mentioned, recorded during the project. That is why we need to put food education back in European schools: because we value our students and their prospects for long, healthy, and happy lives.