Communication and education: food as a subject of study
Food, communication and education. Three words that, in our country, are increasingly interconnected, thanks, above all, to a decided one cultural change and to a greater demand for clarity and correct information. In short, food is turning into one subject of study and communication to 360 °, because it is able to influence in a decisive way not only on our health, but also on the economy, on the development of the territory and on the environment.
In Italy food education has had a boom for just over ten years. Following, also, of the solicitations of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Ministry of Education has prepared the guidelines for a careful training course on the subject, while the Ministry of Health has recognized, in the school, the responsibility to stimulate knowledge and awareness, in order to positively influence healthy lifestyles.
Although, to date, it is not yet a real curriculum subject, but more and more schools and universities have taken the topic to heart, grasping its relevance, through individual initiatives, more structured or real projects Master. For the little ones, initiatives and micro-projects continue to add up, often offering fun and interactive pills of knowledge about nutrition, but also about agriculture, production and their impact on the environment. Stresses, in this sense, also come from the institutions. For example, in recent months, the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) and the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies (MIPAAF), with the support of the Department of Experimental Medicine of the Sapienza University of Rome , have launched a Touch book free, from the name "Style Change", addressed, in two different versions, to children from 6 to 11 years and to children from 12 to 18 years.
At the university level there are numerous i Master that offer the opportunity to become food communicators. If in Pollenzo, in the province of Cuneo, a real one was born University of Gastronomic Sciences, thanks to the intuition of Slow Food, up and down the boot you can meet numerous proposals, aimed at teaching the correct ways to communicate food and to recognize, more deeply, all the aspects that inevitably concern it: from food and wine to sociology, from history to design, from economics to aesthetics, from science to technology.
