Food Revolution Day 2013 - Toronto

A couple of weeks back I got together with a couple of members of the Food Revolution Day Ambassadors Team from Toronto and Vaughan and we created a video to promote this year's Food Revolution Day on May 17th.  I went out and bought a whole boat load of fresh vegetables and we did a Blind Taste Test with a bunch of kids at the Petits Chefs Academy where our Vaughan Team Ambassador Denise owns a cooking school for kids.  They were pretty smart and food savvy kids but I managed to stump them on a couple of vegetables.  It's my mission for all kids to know what vegetables are and to try things they have never tried.  How can anyone know what they like to eat if they have never tried it?  We did a blind taste testing on 3 different vegetable dishes.  Artichokes, Celery Root and Kale chips.  They didn't like the artichokes too much but they loved the celery root salad and thought it was coleslaw and they ate all of it.    2 out of 3 isn't too bad.   I wanted the kids to do a blind taste test so that they would try a vegetable without first judging it on how it looked.  That way they only decide from the taste and the texture, although we did allow them to smell and touch it.   I used a vinaigrette on the artichoke hearts so they didn't like the fact that it was oily.  Oh well... next time I would try and spinach artichoke dip.  I bet they would like that.

I was inspired to become an Ambassador after seeing what Jamie Oliver had done in the U.K. with the school lunches and then on to a school in the U.S.   It made me realize that kids don't get exposed to a diverse array of foods other than what they can afford or what they eat in their homes or their friends and families homes.  We need to bring back food education in schools and teach kids where their food comes from and what it is, what to do with it, how to preserve it, and what it tastes like.  Food is a necessity for everyone's life, so I don't understand why this necessary knowledge isn't taught in most schools and why convenience food is subsidized but healthy food isn't.   We need to reverse this so that childhood obesity becomes a disease of the past like the plague.

I am going to edit a bit more video from the day but here is a short clip just to get you inspired to Join us on May 17, 2013.

http://vimeo.com/62916016