The College’s Year 12 Food Studies class is studying proposed solutions to global food insecurity. In class they have been learning about the different factors that can impact food supply including natural disasters, war, poverty and the demand for biofuels.
In the practical lesson this week students were given the scenario of an Australian family experiencing food insecurity — the family lives in a remote area and they have limited availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods because of a flooding disaster, they have experienced loss of income and their access to clean water is unreliable. The students only had one bucket of water each for cooking and cleaning and they had to produce the meal with limited cooking equipment.
The challenge was to create a healthy family meal from a list of basic household food items, including chicken mince, bread, couscous, polenta, vermicelli noodles, tomato paste, eggs, carrot, capsicum, zucchini, oil, flour, butter and a limited range of dried herbs and spices. Despite this, they came up with a diverse range of meals, including sausage rolls, an omelette with vegetables and toasted bread, meatballs, zucchini noodles, stuffed zucchini, stir fries and a buddha bowl.
The exercise let students experience food insecurity and the challenge of cooking with limited resources. They had to use a variety of skills, including budgeting, creativity and adaptability.
