Teaching food literacy in Queensland secondary schools: The influence of curriculum

Abstract

The need for comprehensive food education has been made visible by the COVID-19 pandemic. Charlebois et al. (2021) explain that the pandemic left many people vulnerable to food insecurity, forcing them to learn new food skills and knowledge to negotiate the uncertainty of being locked down at home with limited access to food. In addition, Horikawa et al. ( 2022) identified that Japanese school children experienced imbalanced home dietary intakes when in the care of guardians with low food literacy during the pandemic, especially within lowincome households. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted food literacy education to be crucial, now more than ever.Handy et al. ( 2021) stressed the importance of food preparation knowledge for individual, family, and community health. Family and Consumer Sciences subjects, also known as home economics (HEc), are the curriculum sites in schools where the skills and knowledge required

Mapping the intellectual structure and knowledge base of food literacy research: a bibliometric analysis

“…The UN (2021) has also linked food illiteracy to unhealthy and unsustainable individual and food system behaviours and has connected unsustainable food actions as barriers to achieving all 17 SDGs (UN, 2015). Despite this, research indicates that food education is often disrespected, marginalised, under-resourced, under-staffed and inconsistent in schools (Ling and Lai-Yeung, 2011;Markow et al, 2012;McManus et al, 2023;Pendergast and Dewhurst, 2012). Educational curriculum policy supporting critical food literacy education in schools has the ability to re-brand critical food literacy education in schools as essential, with benefits extending beyond individuals to the greater society.…”