Michael Haggert
The other day, our youngest daughter
made supper. The stakes might have been
higher than your everyday supper as her
boyfriend’s parents were joining us for the
meal, and to meet us for the first time. She
planned the meal, shopped for the
ingredients, did all the prep work, cooked
and served (and mostly cleaned up
afterwards).
I’m not talking about some
open-box-and-wait-for-20-minutes kind of
supper. This was a full Sunday roast with all
the fixings. She’s 19. She spent a year living
away before coming back to live at home
and go to school here. It was her first time
cooking this meal and it turned out
perfectly.
But this isn’t about looking up recipes
on Pinterest and fantastic pot roast. This is
about Six by Sixteen. I only heard the term
last week but I’m sure it will gain some
traction in the coming weeks and months.
The initiative, developed by the Ontario
Federation of Agriculture and supported by
multiple food organizations in Ontario, aims
to get children to know how to make six
meals by the time they are 16 years old. I
think they may have set the bar a little low
but the alliteration is catchy.
I don’t share my kitchen very well. It’s
easier and quicker to peel five pounds of
potatoes than it is to goad a reluctant
10-year-old into doing it. All of it. When it
needs to be done, and I mean now.
But it’s a disservice to the 10-year-old’s
future health and well-being not to invest
the time and effort to teach some simple
skills in the kitchen. The kitchen should be
Watch OFA's video
on food literacy
Click here
Food literacy has been
identified as one of the key
objectives in the Canadian
Federation of Agriculture's
National Food Strategy. Young
adults - 11- to 15-year-olds were further identified as a
key audience to teach about
food literacy. The Ontario
Federation of Agriculture
(OFA) developed the Six by
Sixteen initiative to help
establish lifelong healthy food
practices with this audience.
Food literacy feeds our
families, supports our
agricultural communities and
grows our economy.
one of our children’s first classrooms. Of
course, there are hazards, but they can be
mitigated. There are developmental
milestones that affect judgement and
coordination. I’m not suggesting anyone
give the three-year-old a 10-inch chef knife
and have him dice carrots. But when he
shows the concentration and dexterity to
handle the tools in the kitchen, he should
start practising.
You know why everything seemed to
taste better at your 70-year-old
grandmother’s house? It’s because she had
the better part of 70 years of practice to get
that good at it. This is a lifelong skill. Some
may discover a vocation. It’s a long road to
becoming a master. Start now. Invest the
time, effort and emotional energy into some
core competencies. Six by Sixteen is a short
way into a steep learning curve and is really
a bare minimum.
There will come a day when the parents
of the kid your child is dating come over for
dinner. I hope your pot roast is as good as
the one we had that night.
Tell us on Facebook about your adventures with food this month,
or tweet us @thehubWE #foodmatters
February 2016 - The HUB 7