This study addresses the complex challenges of childhood obesity, food poverty and environmental degradation by developing a planetary health framework for school food in education. Drawing on Dewey's experiential learning philosophy, it adopts an integrative approach where school meals and food education converge. Rooted in the planetary health…

This paper critically examines the development of food charity in schools in England. Growing numbers of schools, often in partnership with charities and businesses, are directly providing food to parents who are struggling to feed their families. This paper analyses how and why this is happening and its broader significance. The growth of food…

Unsustainable palm oil production is having a devastating impact on biodiversity in producing countries in Southeast Asia. Certification schemes for sustainable palm oil have the potential to reduce these impacts. The ubiquity of palm oil in processed foods found in supermarkets is a challenge that requires intervention at the policy level and…

The Department for Education sees school education as responding to what its ministers perceive as the economic demands of the future. They fail to recognise the need for young people to be prepared for the ecological problems on the horizon, such as climate change, economic turmoil and the human consequences of a global shortage of food, water…

In this paper, drawing on an extensive research project across three countries (VET Africa 4.0 Collective 2023), we produce an emerging argument that it is necessary to rethink and reframe VET logics and approaches in a warming future dominated by informality and mass unemployment. Currently, neither the formal VET college or workplace are…

Foodborne diseases are a global burden, are preventable, and young people are a key population for behaviour change as they gain autonomy. This study aimed to explore young people's needs across several European countries in relation to learning about and implementing food hygiene and food safety. Qualitative focus groups and interviews were…

The COVID-19 pandemic shone a light upon the issue of food insecurity in families, with school closures (for most children) drawing concern not simply because of the impact upon pupils' education, but also due to the lack of free school meals available for children in families with low incomes (Lalli, 2021). Since the pandemic, families in the…

Drawing on ethnographic research with organisations redistributing wasted food, this paper explores potentials for political and ethical learning by comparing different approaches to food handling and teaching. Food acts as instigator and tool for learning about ecological impacts, wellbeing, provenance, health and pleasure. Re-learning wasted…

The issue of 'holiday hunger' (i.e. food insecurity during school holidays) has received increased attention in recent years, though research in this area is limited. Through qualitative, semi-structured interviews, the current study investigated the views of 12 primary school staff on the existence, impacts and potential solutions to holiday…

This paper explores the experience of researching food in schools. Food is personal. It is an ingested symbol of culture, family, tradition, ethnicity… What does this mean as a researcher? How do we navigate food relationships? How is this relationship shaped by the rules of the school? This paper examines how I went about doing food research in…

Feeding problems, such as picky eating and food avoidance, are common in youth with autism. Other feeding and eating problems (e.g. disordered eating, fear of trying new foods, and insistence on specific food presentation) are also common in this population. This scoping review describes the nature and extent of feeding and eating problems in…

This paper discusses the use of mapping as part of an ethnographic research project exploring food experiences in primary schools. Whilst the main data collection instrument was participant observation, the project made use of a creative social mapping activity. Towards the end of fieldwork, children were asked to draw maps of the food spaces at…

If people want to be healthy they need to eat. However, food poverty (the inability to afford or access food to make up a healthy diet) is just one of the consequences of climate change. For many children in UK schools, food poverty is their everyday experience. The UK's food poverty rate is suggested to be among the highest in Europe; despite the…

Introduction: Tooth decay is the most common reason for non-emergency hospital admissions in 5-9 year olds. As such, it is included in the England school curriculum at 8-9 years to facilitate improved oral hygiene and prevent tooth decay. Aim: Measure student and teacher baseline oral hygiene knowledge; determine effect of the e-Bug oral hygiene…

Elevation is the emotion elicited by witnessing acts of moral beauty and may be framed as the opposite of disgust. Two studies investigated the role of elevation in moral judgment and its relation to disgust. In Study 1 it was investigated whether elevation can attenuate the effects of disgust on moral transgression judgments. Participants were…