Food Literacy
Benchmarking

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Historically, food education has involved an arbitrary curriculum imposed by adults about what all children should know. However, without knowing what food-related skills and gaps children have, school systems and society cannot design appropriate curriculum. Regularly benchmarking children’s food literacy and reflecting on individual gaps is the first step to re-imagining lifelong food education.

Interactive Food Literacy Benchmarking Protocol
(Designed for Cambodia and Japan)

Food Literacy
Benchmarking Protocol

Benchmark

Measurement Tool

Food Literacy Domain

Visual Recognition

Interactive exercise

Select

Olfactory Recognition

Interactive exercise

Select

Cooking Skills Survey

Structured questionnaire

Prepare
Eat

Food Tolerance Survey

Structured questionnaire

Eat

Design a Menu

Interactive exercise

Plan and Manage

Food Tolerance Survey

Interactive exercise

Eat

Bitter Vegetable Tolerance

Eating activity

Eat

Fish Eating Contest

Eating activity

Eat

Description of Food Literacy Benchmarking Protocol: Our initiative aims to develop an interactive food literacy benchmark that can evaluate the current state and food literacy precursors (potential skills) of children. It is designed to be administered two times (grade 4-6 and grade 10-12) to track progress. The goal is to capture actually life relevant food literacy skills using methods suitable for children. The range of activities implemented with pupils was meant to cover and, in some cases, triangulate food skills in all the four domains of Food Literacy (see Figure Above, adapted from Vidgen and Gallegos 2014).  Interactive or task-based exercises were used when at all practical, particularly for the domains of Plan and Manage, Select, and Eat. This includes logistically challenging activities, such as arranging the large-scale consumption (on occasion for up to 70 pupils!) of bitter vegetables and fish.

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Visual Recognition

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Fish Eating Contest

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Olfactory Recognition

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Bitter Vegetable Tolerance

We don’t shy away from creative and interactive methods that are fun for children and more accurate than conventional surveys.

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Food Tolerance Survey

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Fish Eating Contest

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Design a Menu

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Visual Recognition

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Food Tolerance Survey

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Visual Recognition

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Visual Recognition

Publications

‘Negotiating Technical and Ideological Standards for Agroecological Rice Production in Emerging Markets: The Case of Cambodia’, Feuer, Hart N., East Asian Science, Technology and Society 5(4):441-459. https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-1458013

Closed Access
doi

‘Putting Cooking Skills to the Test: Dietary Lifestyles in Cambodia's Industrial Slums’, Feuer, H.N., Seng, S., in Olmedo, E., Kay, Rachel C.S. (Eds.), Food and Society in Asia Pacific: Taste, Culture, Education, pp. 124-138. Kuala Lumpur: KITA-UKM Press.

Open Access 
PDF

‘Institutional food literacy in Japan's Children's Canteens: Leveraging food system skills to reduce food waste and food insecurity via new food distribution network’, Nomura, A., Feuer, H.N., The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food (IJSAF), (Forthcoming).

Open Access

Division of Natural Resource Economics,
Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, © Hart N. Feuer

Get in touch
info@heritagefoodliteracy.com