Contrasting Approaches to Food Education and School Meals

This study builds on a fieldwork in a Danish school class, where pupils were observed while preparing and eating school meals. It shows that the children encounter conflicting approaches to food education depending on the context. While eating, an authoritarian approach to food education dominates and food is ascribed instrumental value. While preparing the school meal, a democratic approach dominates and food is ascribed intrinsic value. The aim is to show how these conflicting approaches reflect not only different social and cultural expectations to eating and preparing meals, respectively, but also a conflict between food educational ideals and actual school meal practices. To illustrate this an analytic model is introduced, the Integrated Food Pedagogy Model, and the ways in which this model could help promote better food education among schoolchildren are discussed.