Taunton and South Somerset Living Dec 2022 - Jan 2023

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AT QUEENS COLLEGE TAUNTON
Joe Mann Head of Faculty of Art, Design, and Food at Queens College Taunton tells us
more about his role as a food teacher and just how things have changed for the better...
Tells us more about your role at
Queens College
I am a Food Teacher at Queen’s College
who has an enormous passion for
teaching children about Food and
Nutrition, delivering effective food
education, and equipping children
with valuable food life skills at Queen’s
College and beyond. It’s also about
providing a range of extra-curricular
opportunities for our pupils to engage
with: growing fresh produce, rearing,
harvesting fruit and vegetables, cookery
competitions, visiting professional chefs,
inviting in outside food celebrities and
speakers, and visits to farms, restaurants,
hotels and other catering establishments.
These are just a few of the ways we like
to engage our pupils in providing handson
and educational activities that develop
a love of the subject and opportunities
beyond the classroom, that keeps our
school motto alive: ‘we learn not for
school but for life’.
How important is a balanced diet to
school today?
There is so much disconnect and
confusion nowadays about, where
their food comes from living in our
convenience society with so much
eating processed foods that it has never
been so important to understand what
constitutes a healthy balanced diet as
part of a healthy balanced lifestyle. As a
nation, we need a sustainable, positive,
food system that provides choice and
access to high-quality products that
support healthier and home-grown diets
for all. As a school, we understand this
need and foods served in the dining
not only reflect our push for a healthy
balanced diet, we have had organic foods
grown by pupils served in the canteen
and school chefs delivering lessons about
the food they cook in our classes.
How much has changed in terms of
dietary food in the last 10 years?
In schools, there have been far stricter
guidelines in place, in the latest decade
there has been a huge increase in the
types of healthier food being both served
in school canteens and taught about
in kitchen classrooms. In lessons, the
move was made towards teaching how
to prepare predominantly savoury items
and in the school canteens, guidelines
were put in place limiting the number of
processed foods served each week and
ensuring a minimum amount of fruits
and vegetables are present in each meal,
with various new nutrient-dense, healthy
options available to pupils every day.
How do you go about creating what is
good for your pupils?
In the last decade, there has been a
huge shift change from teaching Food
Technology to the advent of Teaching
Food and Nutrition in 2014. Food and
Nutrition is a practical subject that has a
strong focus on applying the principles
of nutrition and healthy eating to the
foods we cook. Pupils are taught to cook
a repertoire of predominantly savoury
rather than sweet dishes and become
competent in a range of practical skills,
processes and techniques. We are
passionate about instilling a love of
cooking in our pupils that will open a
door to one of the great expressions
of human creativity. Learning how to
cook is a crucial life skill and our pupils
become competent in a range of cooking
techniques so that they are able to feed
themselves and others a healthy diet,
now and in later life.
Children are renowned for being fussy
eaters. How do you combat this?
Many children and young people go
through phases of refusing meals or
being pickier with food. This can be a
normal part of growing up. There are
lots of reasons why a child might not eat
particular foods and they can become
simply overwhelmed by eating certain
foods. It’s always worth remembering
that we use all our senses when eating
and they all work together. We teach that
eating starts with our eyes. We all look
at the shape, colour and presentation
of our food when deciding what to eat,
but we also use taste, touch, smell and
even hearing (especially with a crusty
baguette!) We all process sensory
information differently. What smells good
to one person can be unpleasant to
others. The best tip is to involve children
in lots of exciting and engaging food
preparation activities and it is hugely
important that children see others
enjoying eating and trying different foods.
And for Vegetarian/Vegan pupils?
There has certainly been a lot of talk
recently about the number of people
adopting a plant-based diet increasing
enormously over the last few years.
At Queen’s, we teach the government
healthy eating guidelines of a balanced
diet using the Eatwell Guide. When it
comes to protein intake it means we
talk about beans, pulses, fish, eggs,
meat and other proteins. Beans, peas
and lentils are good alternatives to meat
because they’re naturally very low in fat,
and they’re high in fibre, protein, vitamins
and minerals. But if you like your meats
then that is fine as well but we advise
that some types of meat are higher in fat,
particularly saturated fats. To cut down
on fat it is worth choosing leaner cuts
of meat and going for a leaner mince,
cutting the fat off of meat and the skin off
of chicken, trying to grill meat and fish
instead of frying and having a boiled or
poached egg instead of fried. If you eat
more than 90g of red or processed meat
per day, then we suggest trying to cut it
down to no more than 70g per day.
01823 340830
admissions@queenscollege.org.uk
www.queenscollege.org.uk
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