I’m a first grade assistant teacher in a private school in Brooklyn. I’m also doing a masters in education at Bank Street College, and grew up on a farm in the south west of France. Food means everything to me. I was raised on farm fresh products and attended french public schools where we regularly ate herring, sardines, carrot salads, pate etc…

Last year I introduced a restaurant curriculum to my classroom – even though we have a great cafeteria, I was shocked by the food that the children gravitated towards or brought for breakfast from home.

As I read your article I noticed that one of the thorniest issues in cafeteria lunches is successfully weaning the children off from their present diets as well as convincing them to try new things. I introduced a very popular activity in my classroom which I would like to share with you. It was recommended to me by my math professor at Bank Street, Hal Melnick, who has observed its success in a number of public schools in the city.

It is called Brave Tasters. When you first introduce the activity you have to specifically emphasize that kids who choose to participate are being brave. The kids love that. Furthernmore it’s ok to spit it out if you don’t like it (as long as you aren’t over dramatic about it – just spit it out in a napkin). You’re still being brave and noone should make their peers feel bad. The idea is that I introduce a product, giving them a litte background history, and then ask: who will be brave enough to taste the dreaded paaapaaayaa (for eg)? Most of the children get very excited, and eventually I find that the last sceptics give in because everyone is having so much fun. Previous to the activity, I also take each child’s photo making a delicious and a disgusting face. After they taste the product, they choose the appropriate photo and place it on a bar graph. This way they learn about the organization of data while examining how many kids like or dislike the food. I also ask them to write about how it tasted, or draw it, regardless of whether it was a good or bad experience(one of my students wrote that ‘papaya tastes like horse manure’!)

In my case our class ended up tasting papaya, arugula, comte cheese, fresh white anchovies, field mushrooms and serrano ham! More students liked rather than disliked all the products except for the mushrooms and anchovies, and even in those cases some of them liked it. I then used the popular ingredients to devise a menu for our restaurant. The curriculum was very successful, and I had countless parents telling me how grateful they were because their kids were trying out new foods at home. Furthermore all the children were especially supportive to their friends if they knew it was hard for them to taste things.

I’m not sure if this activity could be incorporated on a larger scale, but I do think the idea that turning the tasting of new things from a chore to a challenge is a positive and popular development for children.

I truly admire Ann Cooper’s dedication, hard work and imagination. Best of luck to you!

Savannah Roberts