I'll eat my own face if the instructors of this course had any nutritional training.

I was biting my tongue this afternoon. I think I need a new one.

I attended a cooking workshop as part of my professional learning today. The purpose is to make healthy foods more normal for children forming a part of a healthy life. When children are involved in the growing and preparation of their food, they are more likely to eat it. This, I completely agree with.

Ignorance with respect to the science, is holding healthful lives away from children who are being taught that eating animal products is part of a healthy diet.

There is more to unhealthy foods than processed food and confectionery.

But this was what was being echoed throughout the training. Sugar and "processed food". While I hate to focus on a deficit model of nutrition (what you can't eat), we need to get a few things straight;

• Meat is at least probably carcinogenic.
• Dairy strips calcium from the body.
• Eggs contain a huge wad of cholesterol which is a contributor to heart disease.
• Eating animal products put the body into a state of increased inflammation and decreased immune function.

Although highly simplified, these are scientific facts as we currently understand them. This program promoted eating ham on just about everything, included melted cheese (and more ham) on mini pizzas and praised mixing yoghurt with muesli as a treat.

Thank the flying spaghetti monster for rice paper rolls!

Thankfully, the importance of fruits and vegetables wasn't lost on the instructors. It's just a gigantic shame that what greens were added to the food were fighting the uphill battle to ward off the damage of the animal products being consumed. D'oh!

What did I take away from the session?

I realised that I'm already doing a bang on job showing my students that you can live healthfully, vitally and energetically on fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains.

If eating a wholefood plant-based diet just allowed our kids to stay thin and disease-free for life, that would be reason enough.

Knowing that ham, cheese and eggs consume vastly more resources than plant foods and are a product of animal exploitation and cruelty just hammers in those final nails into the coffin. No child deserves to be lied to (I think we can agree that when SO much information is freely and readily available, being ignorant shouldn't be an excuse anymore), especially when those lies are making Australian children fat and predisposes them to a range of lifestyle diseases that are entirely preventable.

A talented group of teachers continue to have their values of old reinforced by misinformed instructors with good intentions. Can we actually look at the evidence now? It's 2018.

We made salad faces on rice thins. Their recipe called for cream cheese. I'd suggest hummus or tofutti 'better than cream cheese'. Notice the cranky eyebrows on my salad face? I was artistically expressing my emotions.

Let's move on.

I've been rereading Rich Tommaso's Dry County. Did I tell you anything about it, yet? I'm loving it. Maybe we'll chat about it tomorrow, eh?

All the best,

Nick.

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