The motto of World Food Day 2026 reminds the Goetheanum’s nutrition expert Jasmin Peschke of the saying: Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach them to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.
“When you cook, you experience that your actions have visible consequences. You create something that nourishes you and that is also benefits others,” says Dr Jasmin Peschke, head of Nutrition in the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum. She illustrates the learning effect of cooking with an example from Heliopolis University for Sustainable Development in Cairo, Egypt: “One of the students had never done kitchen work, because he had always been well cared for by his mother.” Now, as a student on the nutrition module of the biodynamics course, he worked in the school kitchen, fetched the milk in the morning and prepared breakfast for the school children. Then he had to chop tomatoes and carrots, cook beans and serve lunch. “It pained him to see that half of the food he had helped preparing ended up in the bin. He had a direct experience of food waste.”
Ruben von Schwanenflügel, head of a school kitchen in Germany, made the following observation: “When you work with dough, you gradually develop a sense for its texture. Quantities, sequences, cleanliness and time are no longer abstract concepts, because they determine how good the food is and whether people like to eat it.” When school children are involved in preparing food for the school community, they experience meaningfulness because their actions lead to tangible results.
For Jasmin Peschke this is the innovative aspect of cooking as a school subject. She is certain that “children experience self-efficacy and learn about food and where it comes from. When we know where the lettuce on our plate comes from and how much work has gone into growing it, its value begins to extend beyond that of its purchase price. And we treat it with greater awareness and care.” Daily food preparation offers children an experience that can be the foundation for lifelong healthy eating.
