Ever wondered how much of a role nutrition really plays in student education and well-being? Together with Lauren Hughes, the well-being coordinator at Repton Abu Dhabi, we unravel the importance of this often understated factor in children's educational journey. Our conversation uncovers the explicit need to engage in dialogue about well-being, given the vastly different world our children are growing up in compared to past generations.
We further explore the power of nutrition on children’s cognitive function, emotional regulation, and learning ability. As we uncover the crucial role parents play in shaping their children's dietary habits, we hear heartening feedback from parents at Repton Abu Dhabi gradually embracing the importance of nutrition. It isn't about achieving perfection, rather about making progress towards healthier dietary habits for their children.
Lauren generously shares about a project she helmed at Repton Abu Dhabi focusing on student well-being. We talk about the importance of having a safe space where families can share their food and mealtime challenges. We also stress on the critical role of expert help, the power of delegation and the potential of a strong Parent-Teacher Association in fostering sustainable change. We conclude by reinforcing the importance of self-respect, valuing one's body and the integration of healthy eating habits into daily life. It's not just about the food we eat, but the respect we show our bodies and ourselves. Join us for this insightful discussion.
Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.
Visit our website https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast.
Tweet us: https://twitter.com/teachmiddleeast
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Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson
Connect with Leisa Grace:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/
Ever wondered how much of a role nutrition really plays in student education and well-being? Together with Lauren Hughes, the well-being coordinator at Repton Abu Dhabi, we unravel the importance of this often understated factor in children's educational journey. Our conversation uncovers the explicit need to engage in dialogue about well-being, given the vastly different world our children are growing up in compared to past generations.
We further explore the power of nutrition on children’s cognitive function, emotional regulation, and learning ability. As we uncover the crucial role parents play in shaping their children's dietary habits, we hear heartening feedback from parents at Repton Abu Dhabi gradually embracing the importance of nutrition. It isn't about achieving perfection, rather about making progress towards healthier dietary habits for their children.
Lauren generously shares about a project she helmed at Repton Abu Dhabi focusing on student well-being. We talk about the importance of having a safe space where families can share their food and mealtime challenges. We also stress on the critical role of expert help, the power of delegation and the potential of a strong Parent-Teacher Association in fostering sustainable change. We conclude by reinforcing the importance of self-respect, valuing one's body and the integration of healthy eating habits into daily life. It's not just about the food we eat, but the respect we show our bodies and ourselves. Join us for this insightful discussion.
Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.
Visit our website https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast.
Tweet us: https://twitter.com/teachmiddleeast
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachmiddleeast/.
Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson
Connect with Leisa Grace:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/
Hi everyone, this is Lisa Grace and welcome to the Teach Middle East podcast. Today I'm talking with Lauren Hughes from Repton, abu Dhabi, and we're talking well-being, nutrition, eat well, learn well. Lauren is the well-being coordinator at Repton Abu Dhabi and she's also a teacher, and miraculously she's able to juggle all of that while still being a mom and get her hair looking fabulous. If you're listening to this, go over to the YouTube channel and look at her fringes. They're banging. But we're really on a topic that is near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 2:You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast connecting, developing and empowering educators.
Speaker 1:So we're going to jump right in. Let's first welcome Lauren. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3:Hi thanks, Lisa. Thank you so much for having me Very excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you for being here. See how loud I am. You're going to have to get loud with me today. She has the soft, beautiful voice. Guys, she's not like me.
Speaker 3:It's the inner yogi in me trying to use my yogic voice. I'm going to use a boom. instead, i'll use my outdoor voice. Please use your outdoor voice.
Speaker 1:We love a bit of yoga, but today we really want to hear your out voice, your outer voice, lauren. what is well-being so important to you?
Speaker 3:Okay, so I've been teaching for nearly 12 years now and ever since I started teaching, well-being was something that, to me, felt very natural in terms of surely, if a child's well, then they're going to learn, and it was something that always felt very important to me. But right at the beginning of my career, we weren't anywhere near where we are with well-being within education at the moment, so whenever I tried to mention it, it was kind of okay, yeah, okay, back to maths and English, which, of course, has its place. But I think as we've moved on, we now realise that it's an essential foundation for a child's learning, not just for them to be happy and for them to be healthy, but there are undeniable links between them being well, both emotionally, physically, and the positive correlation to their teaching, their learning and the teaching within the classroom. So, yeah, it's really important to me. I feel like it's kind of a non-negotiable that has to be met first, and then everything else can be layered on top of it.
Speaker 1:You are so right. What sparked this new turn of events? What do you think has sparked it? Because, without ageing myself too much, i have been in education for 20, i would say about 24 years this year, and in my formative years no one mentioned student well-being. It was just not a thing that was mentioned. But recently there's been a change. What has sparked this change, do you think?
Speaker 3:I think COVID kind of brought it to the limelight, because we were teaching and learning in a very different way and we suddenly had to be very mindful of what was happening in our children's homes how they were physically, obviously, whether they were well enough to learn or if they had COVID, but also how they were dealing with that social isolation. But also, i think, if we look at how maybe our parents or our grandparents would have learned, they were living in a very different world to the world that we're living in at the moment. And whilst we've made strides in many ways, i do think the cost of modern living has meant that we need to probably explicitly talk about well-being more than we would have had to say 50 years ago, because we would have been living in a way whereby we'd be sort of arched back to that tribal sense. You would be living where maybe your auntie would be living up the road, your grandma would be living down the road, your granddad would be there, you'd have all of your support system around you and parents had that. More importantly, not necessarily you as a child, but the parents had that, and so the whole notion of it takes a village to raise a child and we're not meant to do this thing called parenting alone.
Speaker 3:We are doing that now. We are living in a completely different world and I think, unfortunately, we're now seeing the medium to long-term effects on that. I think we only have to look at mental health statistics to know that something really needs to change. Our priority has to take a shift. We strive for a world-class education here at Repton, but we also know that there's no point in ascending these young people out into the world with every letter after their name if, by 21, they don't have the maybe emotional toolkit to make sure that they are well and able to live a wholesome and happy and fulfilling life, but also if they've got diabetes by the time they're 21 and they don't have their health to enjoy that wealth of opportunity that we've given them with education. We have to prepare them for a world in a much more holistic sense. I think That's our duty of care.
Speaker 1:I think Yeah, no, you're right, and we're going to come back to that whole piece in a minute, because I can remember not hearing anything about well-being. I think the closest we would go back then is safeguarding, making sure the students aren't being abused, but don't even look at the subtleties of well-being, and I think it was just a different life.
Speaker 3:Maybe it was that we didn't need it so much back then, or maybe we just know more now And we can't unsee it. now We have no excuse. You know, it's like maybe they had the excuse of ignorance then, and plus the fact that we're living in a very different world, a much more well-supported world emotionally and socially. But we can't close our eyes anymore to this stuff. I don't think.
Speaker 1:Why are we so much more disconnected now, do you think?
Speaker 3:It's interesting, isn't it? Because if you look through an evolutionary lens, this way of living, how we live now, has changed really in the blink of an eye, if you think how humans have been living for thousands of years, in the support systems that they had, in the connections that they had. So we did a piece at the beginning of the year, in fact our theme of well-being. Throughout the year I keep bringing back to connection The Blue Zone data. I don't know if you're familiar with the Blue Zone data. So it's the pockets around the world that have the most centenarians. They have the best health and longevity. It's not just that they live to a very old age, they live to an old age in a very healthy way. They don't depend on medication and they might still be shepherding their sheep up a mountain at the age of 95. And so there's the obvious commonalities that we know about.
Speaker 3:So obviously we'll talk about later about the nutrition side. They eat very well. The term is they live close to the earth and close to each other, so everything's done in a very natural way. They eat very fresh, whole foods. They have a lifestyle that means that they are moving regularly. So they're not booking into Blitz gym classes, but rather they have a life that nudges them into movement regularly, not just as free gym classes that we might do a week, but the biggest thing, the biggest predictor from the Blue Zone research and also the Harvard Happiness Research, which is the biggest study of happiness I think we were talking about, weren't we, last time we chatted.
Speaker 3:It's been a study of 80 years, multiple generations, and the key for a happy, healthy and long life is connection. So this is what we keep coming back to here And it's that, yeah, that key for connection. And yet everything in our world now makes it so that we don't need connection, and we saw that during lockdown, didn't we? We could. I mean, in some ways it was lucky We couldn't, we didn't have to go to the shop because we could insta shop here in Abu Dhabi. You just order what you want and it turns up at your door, and actually it's wonderful for things like lockdown, but it was also quite frightening to realize how you could just go on with life having no human interaction with people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny, i think, it was scary, i think, for me, when you realize that you could literally become an island and it didn't feel good, it didn't feel fun. And then I also think that what we have now gives us a fake sense of connection. So we think we're connected because we have a certain amount of followers or a certain amount of friend connections online, but we're not really connected. And I worry for young people because they're more disconnected than ever, because their parents are so busy, their lives themselves are so busy that when do they, as young people, even get a chance to connect sensibly with other young people?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so true And I just thank goodness that the world is open back up and we can have ECAs again and clubs again and they can play in a more normal, natural way. But I also wonder how much they are missing out or things that would have been subtly modelled to us all day, every day, like going for a walk with your parents as children. When we were children, my dad would say good morning to everyone. It's like morning, morning, how are you All right? And I'd be like dad, is that Or just that art of small talk and conversation, whereas you get into a lift now and it's almost uncomfortable if you don't have a phone, because it feels odd. And actually, if you just take a breath and start making conversation with someone, chances are it will flow and it will be lovely, but it feels quite a brave step now, doesn't it, to make conversation with someone you don't know.
Speaker 1:It's almost like you're intruding, because everybody's pretending to be so busy on their screen or looking somewhere else that you almost feel intrusive. if you say hi, how are you doing today? Like they probably will look at you as if you're strange or maybe you would feel that way. Maybe they wouldn't, maybe they'd love to chat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it's not our normal now, is it? So if you think I was reading something yesterday and you think when you used to queue up for a coffee in a cafe, so whilst you're waiting you might have a conversation with someone next to you, you might just stand and just look around and really think about what you want. So it's much more mindful, much more intentional what you're getting, rather than just getting them going. I'll have that, that, that. But also we've missed those moments to just daydream and look out of a window and problem solve, like we never have that anymore And cognitively that's so important.
Speaker 3:To daydream, you know to be bored and then to get bored of being bored and then get creative, and none of us have that anymore. And I mean, i'm speaking I'm not speaking from a purist point myself, because I'm as bad as anyone else. It's habitual. I get onto a train and I get my phone out. I get onto a plane, i get my phone out, I get into a lift. It's just noticing, i think, those habits, but for long. It's odd not to do that.
Speaker 1:You know, when you talk about that, i reflect because I am bad. I am bad at that. Like recently, i've been calling myself out on something that I'm even embarrassed about. You know, my son wanted to talk to me about something and I had my phone in my hand And he literally had to say to me Mom, i'm talking to you. Yeah. I thought, oh my God, what am I doing? There's nobody on this screen, nobody on this app, no one more important than you. Why am I not putting the thing down and looking you in the eye? I felt I can't tell you, lauren, how I felt when I realized what I was doing. I was like what are you doing? honestly, i almost smashed my own phone. I chucked it away.
Speaker 3:I think so many people are in exactly the same point And the thing is we automatically start blaming ourselves And we come at it with a point of like, almost judging our moral compass.
Speaker 3:Like you know, like we're doing now because you do that's a mongil, we feel bad. We're constantly I feel like you give birth and you automatically feel bad for something you know because just part of it comes with it, comes with the territory. But also, i just think we need to remember that there's a reason why it's a you know, multi billion pound industry or whatever it is, and there are people who have studied the art of making it. You know as compulsive and addictive as it is and it's a very real brain chemical reaction. You know, like there's there's a reason why there's that dopamine here and we crave it and we want it. And so I think it's really important A to be a witness to your behavior, catch yourself out, hold yourself accountable and have high expectations, but also be kind to yourself, like you're not making these choices because you're being about parent. You're making these choices because that's how these devices were designed Woof.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's. Let's go back to student well-being, because we could talk forever and ever about this, because I loved the way you approached it at Repton, where you didn't just put a few programs in place that were normal in terms of okay, maybe they need to play more, which are all good, but you looked at it from the point of eat well, learn well and looking at what nutrition does for students well-being. What were you thinking when you thought of that program at Repton?
Speaker 3:Well, i think there's obviously lots of different pillars of well-being And in many ways I kind of argue that they can't be dealt with in isolation. But I felt like we were at a point with well-being here we'd raised the awareness a bit and we'd kind of shifted it up the list of priorities, but I felt like we were ready to take a deep dive into it And we were already doing things within school based around nutrition. So we would have lunchbox policies and healthy lunchbox sticker programs and really lovely things happening in school. And there's obviously parts of the curriculum science curriculum that teach children about healthy nutrition and why it's important to make health choices. But ultimately we're dealing with children who don't do the shopping, who don't write the shopping list, who don't decide what's in the cupboards, and also we're dealing with children who are hugely influenced by the marketing and the marketing of the food industry, and so I wanted to make sure that we were bringing the people into the room who were the decision makers for these young people, and in my mind that didn't make any sense to do it without the parents, and so that was why we decided to bring them in. We had a look again.
Speaker 3:I've always tried to come back to the idea of I really want to substantiate well-being. I think for a long time it's had this kind of notion and connotation of being a little bit woo-woo and a bit of an extra, and it's the first thing that falls off the timetable when you're a bit tight for time. But I wanted to substantiate it in science, and so I knew what I wanted to share with our community. But I'm not a clinician, i'm not a medic, i'm not a dietitian, i'm not a nutritionist, i'm not a psychologist, but I wanted to talk about all these things. But, as in, that would be the how, like how can we make this applicable to our families' homes? But then I wanted to bring in the big guys who specialize in this area and be our expert key speakers to tell us why it was so important. And I could you know, i could look at the studies, but I'm not speaking from a place that this is my job and this is my specialism. So we got I think it was 12 expert speakers from around the world. Six of them came into our sessions with us and had live, sort of live panel talks, some of them zoomed in. So, yeah, they provided us with the science and the stats And then we said, right, what does that practically look like at home? So yeah, that was where it all kind of stemmed from.
Speaker 3:We know there's for any teacher out there that's seen, you know that's been in the classroom, or any parent in my house. We call them sugar tears, like I know. If my child goes to a birthday party and has farm off sugars and they're used to and lots of cake and whatever else comes with those kind of celebrations, i can probably give you a 20 minute countdown until the tears come on, because you see it, you know it's just. I was just thinking of a child. We've got no other opportunity, or very few opportunities, where a child is engaging with this behaviour two, three times a day within school and then obviously five times in that whole day. If we can just make one little shift in something that they're doing at least five times a day that the science tells us is going to impact their cognitive function, their emotional regulation, their ability to just cope and be in the classroom in a way that's conducive to learning, then why wouldn't we just make those tiny baby steps towards better health and therefore better learning?
Speaker 1:Brilliant. What were some of the outcomes? What were some of the learnings that came out of all these great experts coming in and giving their time to talk to the students about nutrition and talk to the parents about nutrition? What was the result of that?
Speaker 3:So our feedback from our parents was overwhelmingly positive and I think a lot of that was how we pitched it. Actually, i was very mindful that nutrition is a very emotive topic and then layer on to that, you're talking to parents about their children and, potentially, choices they're making for their children, and so I was very mindful that I didn't want it to be like a lecture. I didn't want it to be about. This is how it has to be, because I'm a mom and I know what it's like. It's busy and so we came at it with a overarching idea of progress over perfection, and also about the food we were talking about.
Speaker 3:It wasn't about what you can't have. It was about what you can put onto your plate. So, rather than that, so much of talk around nutrition is about deprivation and you can't have this and you can't have that, whereas I wanted it to be what can we bring onto our plates or onto our children's plates or into the middle of the table, to make sure that we are giving the most nutrient, dense offerings to our children and broadening their horizons and their pallets so that they can go on and enjoy amazing food later on in their life and that food can be a real joy to them, and so I think that was one of the biggest kind of positive feedbacks that we got was that it was done in a very friendly, gentle, understanding way that didn't make anyone feel any shame. There's enough shame in the world of parenting, i think You know there's enough judgment. No one else needs that.
Speaker 1:Right, And if it's done in a way where you're saying here's an abundance of things that you can add, rather than oh my God, I can no longer have a cookie.
Speaker 3:Sure for sure. And it also kind of brought to light how many cultural differences there are And I know that sounds obvious because we're in such a community of you know diversity. But it really brought to light. We had a clinical psychologist with us on the last session and it brought to light that everyone has their nutritional narrative. You know, everyone's bringing something to the table and it's not what's on their plates, it's what are they bringing from their own childhood.
Speaker 3:What was your story when you were sat around the table? Was it that you had to finish everything on your plate, otherwise you were seen to be ungrateful? Or was it that your mum constantly was talking about losing weight and her body image or tearing her body image apart? We're all consciously or subconsciously bringing that to the table, and so that was really interesting. We died so much deeper than the food pyramid, but that was very organic. We didn't go that deep until week four. So there was almost like a sense of community by then. We tried to create a very safe space where people felt very open. But yeah, it was interesting. I kind of just let it go to wherever our community wanted to take it, because that's what it was a community project. But yeah, there was some really big learnings And I just I don't think I understood how much stress surrounded food and mealtimes for many families.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean especially with young people who don't want to sort of try new things, or it can be very, very stressful And parents have to choose their battles And sometimes we give in because we know that what we're putting on the plate isn't entirely the healthiest. But today we don't have the strength to fight that battle And so we just do what we, what we have to.
Speaker 3:Well, everyone's, and that's the thing. Everyone is doing the best they can with the tools they have available to them, and so the idea of the project was really just to share information so that people could take what resonated with them and their families. That was. The other thing is, a lot of families came in. They were like, right, that's it, let's go. What can we change? Like all change, and we have to be very slow And we had to just gently remind people that it doesn't.
Speaker 3:You don't have to flip everything on its head. You know Like it has to be sustainable. There's no point in going. You know, right, that's it. We're going to make sure that every meal we have is wholesome and home cooked and organic. And I'm going to slave over it for hours and hours because, no, that doesn't work. It's not going to bring you joy, it's not going to work with your routine, and it will last about a week And it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. It will like just bring more stress, you know, to the family. So, yeah, so those are some of the key kind of learnings and takeaways, but yeah, just a really interesting experience and something you could just dive so much deeper with.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about what other schools can do. So let's say, schools have heard about, you know, this program at Repton and they're thinking okay, we're planning for the 2023-2024 academic year. We really want to focus on our student well-being. We don't want to do the cliche things. We listen to this podcast and we want to do a similar program. Where do they begin?
Speaker 3:I think it's quite a bit of work to put together. I'm definitely not an events manager and I've learned a lot in doing it, so my first advice would be make sure you've got a real passion. Make sure it's a passion project, because you're going to have to commit some time to it. that's not in your normal teaching schedule or part of your responsibility. It didn't feel like extra work for me. This is stuff that I listen to and I read about for fun. It's a real, genuine interest of mine. So when I was reaching out to experts that's the other thing is just be a bit bold and be a bit brave. The worst thing that people can do is say no. But I was so overwhelmed by the amount of time that people were willing to give me. I'm talking about people who I've only heard on podcasts like Feel Good to Live More Dr Chatterjee huge podcasts So these people would have been on his podcast and I'd listen to them for forever got millions of followers on Instagram. So I was just bold and said I've got this project. I've got no money, but I really want to do this and we would love to have you. I made sure it's people that I authentically knew, that I really followed and I really knew their work Wasn't just pinging out the same message to everyone. They came back and they were like, of course I'd love to help you. I'll zoom in from Devon in England or Canada or America, because they are just fiercely, infinitely committed to their mission. So that would be my recommendation is make sure it's a passion of yours, because it will take some time, and reach out. Don't try and do it all yourself, because there are people out there who this is their Dharma, this is their soul's purpose, and if you can get someone an audience, they will talk about their passion forever. They're just great for the space. So get them in and let them do the talking, because they're the experts.
Speaker 3:Then I guess, usual team and learning I think I probably need to delegate a little bit more If you can't probably guilty of just trying to do it all. It's not always. yeah, i would definitely delegate a bit more, i think. But we've just done it over at Rept and Abasha. So we've done a little road show. we took Rept and Talks Nutrition over to there. So there one was Team Run It. get your PTA involved. Yeah, i think, spread the word as much as you can as well, listen, take the feedback. what do the people want to know? There's no point in putting something on that's not necessarily relevant to the audience that's going to be in front of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when were these meetings held with parents? Are they after school, or did you guys come in on a Saturday, or how did you organize it so the parents could get involved?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the first one was three days in March. So the first one was on a Thursday and then the following three were on Mondays, weekly apart. They ran from 5.30 until 7.30. So we tried. it's tricky, isn't it, because you're not going to suit everyone. Sometimes it's too late because you're running over bedtime, but if you do it any earlier then you're not open to working parents. they can't be there. So it worked. Do you know?
Speaker 3:I love to people said, well, you film it or you zoom it or film it and do sort of a webinar. And I resisted that. I think potentially I would have had some more engagement, but I kind of put my foot down and I was like no, come on COVID's over, we've got no issues, we can get back in now. I think you just make it too easy sometimes for people not to come. And I don't get me wrong, like everyone's schedule is really busy, but what was built in that room couldn't have been done over Zoom. You know the nuances of the conversation and the energy, if you want to call it that. you can't recreate that on Zoom, i think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, And sometimes when you watch something recorded, you miss I don't know just for me, you miss the whole sentiment behind it, because it just looks like another video.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. You can also do your washing at the same time, or you can prepare dinner, or do you know like it's so tempting to multitask, isn't it, whereas to just do one thing you can't escape it. If you're there live and you've got a panel of people in front of you, then you can't get your phone out. You can't. You just have to be there and leave present.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so and then, if you do it again, maybe the people who've missed it before can get it. What other challenges did you encounter when you were trying to put this together, just in case people are looking where the pitfalls are.
Speaker 3:I think probably the biggest issue, if you like, is getting the right people in the room. The chances are, the people who are turning up to these kind of chats are people who are already interested in nutrition, and so you're almost preaching to the converted a little bit. And if you look at the statistics of, say, the national nutrition strategy though that's a strategy that the UAE are putting in place between the year 2022 and 2030, some of the stats that have come out from that are quite terrifying. I think we think of the states sometimes when we think about obesity crisis, and actually our stats are worse here. 17% of children or teenagers are obese, not overweight, like obese. Nearly 40% are overweight. But I'm not convinced that I had those people in the room. I think it's easy not easy. That's probably an unfair judgment to make, but I think the people I want I probably needed to be talking to weren't the people who were gonna turn up to those kind of things, but I don't know what the answer is for that. What can you do?
Speaker 1:I was about to ask you. My next question was actually Lauren. How do we get those people in the room?
Speaker 3:Well, i don't know, because unless we have real policy change and like, really, as a country and, as you know, a population committed to changing the landscape of pediatric nutrition, but that would mean legislation change, that would mean making it policy within schools that we have nutritional literacy And it's not. You know, a couple of lessons doing the food pyramid, which is arguably outdated now, actually It becomes quite almost. You don't wanna dictate this information, because there's obviously still personal choice too.
Speaker 1:There's still choice. Yeah, it's a hard one. But looking into the future, how do you envision the role of nutrition in education evolving And what steps do you think schools should take to promote student wellbeing through healthy eating?
Speaker 3:Like I said, i would love to see a policy come into place that it becomes as important as the other things that we are teaching children. You know it's a life skill, it's a real tool that they're gonna take into their world that can not only help them with their learning, but it's obviously gonna prevent them from major risk factors of chronic disease. So I would love to see that. But we can't dictate, you know, what policies get pulled into place. So what we can do, i think, is create a culture whereby There's not obsession over healthy eating because that can be dangerous too, i think but rather it's celebrated, and that we are doing everything we can do to make holistic well-being authentically not just kind of a tick box, not just a token. You know, well-being week, it needs to be something that is happening every day and it needs to run like a thread through every decision that we make, i think. But specifically with nutrition, i think we need to practice what we preach so that the food that we're offering our children, maybe through our food providers, aligns with the message that we're telling them in these kind of workshops. Lunchbox policies are brilliant, but I think more guidance could be offered, and we've definitely done that here But things like there's no chocolate in lunchboxes, there's no crisps in lunchboxes. I also think we need to really educate parents in this other hidden stuff. You know, like if you go down that healthy aisle in the supermarket you could buy all of the organic, healthy, free-packaged stuff, but ultimately it's still ultra-processed foods and it might have healthy this and healthy that and it might be in a brown paper packaged and marketed beautifully and I say this because I am that parent that's like, oh, what's that? And in May now I say that it's got this, that and the other one, but it could still have five teaspoons of sugar in. You know, it might not be table sugar, it might be coconut sugar, but it's still sugar. So I think, yeah, i think we need to educate parents because it's not everyone's passion project and it's not the parent's fault. It's very misleading marketing sometimes.
Speaker 3:And, yeah, just celebrate wherever possible, i think. And yeah, just check with ourselves sometimes, like how we framing things like treats. You know, just be very careful with our language. So if it's a treat day at the end of school, at the end of the year, does that mean that everyone's just going to smash six cookies and a packet of crisps. Is that really treating your body? or do you want to be kinder to your body? You know it's, and it's not sealing all the fun and saying that no one can have any chocolate, but just really. I think it always comes down to self-respect and respecting your body and really bigging up self-worth. And what does self-worth mean? Because your body deserves better than that, because it's awesome And you've got so much learning to do and you're so capable and so bright and so clever and so strong, and let's make sure that you're fueling your body with the right stuff. So subtle messaging daily, rather than one big day of let's eat healthy, has to be a daily thing.
Speaker 1:That's a brilliant place to end the pod, because I do believe that if we put it in our everyday practice, it will become far less daunting. And also, i think people need to understand that if you make a mistake and you yeah, you do down a few soft drinks and you might have had a few cookies too many one day, it doesn't mean that it's a total failure. You could just try and do something different another day, you know.
Speaker 3:Especially for children like we're at a point where, when they're you know, they're still at an age where their palate is developing And we've got that's really empowering as a parent, knowing that you know.
Speaker 3:This is the crucial time. If you say no to everything you know, all of the ultra processed stuff, then it becomes the forbidden fruit. If you teach them. This is the other massive learning is, children can understand so much about nutrition and they're so interested in nutrition and they're so willing to get involved with cooking and tasting. And so they're there, you know, like you don't even have to hook them in. They're there, They love it And they're at a point where their palates are developing and you've put the choice of how You know like, if we teach them to mindfully eat and to actually taste freeze, eventually they self-regulate. You put a kid in a sweet shop that understands nutrition and knows that they like a whole range of flavors. They might eat silly sweets, They just won't eat half the shop, you know, And that's something that, yeah, we only have a window of time to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so true. And something else before we close is to talk to kids about ingredients in packaged foods. I do that a lot with my boys, you know. I tell them this is a donut, but essentially it is flour, it is sugar and it is butter. Now, these three things separated, would you eat them? They're like you know, and I'm like, well, all they've done is combine them and bake them or fried them So that you could see the light bulb. They go, oh, that's all that's there. And then I say, oh, and this thing on top is just absolute pure sugar, and they've put some coloring on it. And they're like that's it. And I'm like, yep, that's all there is on that Krispy Kreme Sorry, krispy Kreme, don't sue me, that's all there is. And they get it Like now they're talking to me about oh so what's in this? And I'm like it's just this and this. And they look at well, they're older now, so now they turn things around and read them. It doesn't mean my kids don't still want doughnut, but they have a consciousness.
Speaker 3:And they're making an informed choice, and that's all you can ask, right? And just things like even if they're not at the point of being able to read or I can't read some of the stuff that's on the back of these packets because you know they're huge, long scientific names Just little things like if they're counting more than five ingredients, then that's pretty processed. You know like there's little hacks that they can do in a supermarket And I just speak very openly. My son's, my eldest is nine And I say look, there's a food industry that wants you to want that stuff because you're the most easily influenced slice of the market.
Speaker 3:So they're going to make it, put it at your eye level in shops. They're going to put it at the till, because I'm pretty stressed by the time I get to a till and I've done the big food shop with my kids. So if you come to me then I'm probably going to be at my weakest and be like oh, whatever, just chuck it on the till and I'll pay for it. But also, it's packaged so that it's bright and it's California's, got all your favorite characters on. So once they start seeing this, i see what they've done there, i empower them. They're going to go out and talk about where, like, everything's appetised to them.
Speaker 1:So yeah, i think it's just And they can get it. Nine is a good age, And that exit when you're at the till. I told my kids, if it's sold at this section, it's not coming into our house. And so now, but I've been telling them that since they were like two or three and four and five, And so now they know oh, this is where it's sold. I guess we're not having it, Because if it's sold here you don't get it.
Speaker 3:Sure, i'm paying for a long term gain, because now you don't have to battle with that every time you go to a supermarket.
Speaker 1:No, they get it now, You know. And so I guess our listeners with young kids start telling them you know, this is where it's sold. And I always say you can't have a treat from the sweet or biscuit aisle. You can have a treat from somewhere else, but not those aisles, And so it kind of limits where the treats come from. I don't have to have to buy any.
Speaker 3:And, yeah, you can choose those parameters, can't you? And then give them choice within it. Like we all know, this stuff, like this basic kind of child psychology, make them feel like they've got a choice and then they're full, more comfortable and empowered. So things like we're choosing what's going in the cupboards. If it's not there, the ultra processed stuff isn't in the cupboards, they can't eat it. You have the choice, mums and dads. you know, like it's and I don't say that from a lecture space, i mean it from like it's quite empowering to think actually, we can make most of the choices and then they can make their little choices within that, you know.
Speaker 1:And if the parents help them, to empower them, they'll go to school and tell their friends why are you eating that? Do you know what's in that? That's just blah, blah, blah. Don't eat that.
Speaker 3:And that's where cultural change happens. right, you have happens with the peers, and then you've got the parents on board, you've got the teachers on board And then what you think are just these kind of baby steps become, you know, over the course of the impact over a school potentially could be huge. That's what I hope.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's our hope. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me, lisa, thank you for doing awesome work and sharing all of your good stuff And, yeah, thanks for giving us people a voice, and I love listening to your guests, so you will be keeping me company over the summer.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, Thank you so much Thank you for listening to the Teach Middle East podcast. Visit our website teachmedaleastcom and follow us on social media. The links are in the show notes.