Food and Agriculture Education Lesson Plan Training Series: Eat Seasonal, Eat Local
"Why eat seasonally and eat locally?" Teacher Youting opened this class with a question. For our human ancestors, they ate entirely according to the changing seasons, eating the food produced in season, so eating "seasonal fruits and vegetables" was a very simple matter and something that was bound to happen. But today the supermarket shelves are dazzlingly full of everything; even foods that do not match Taiwan's seasons may be available thanks to imports from abroad or domestic greenhouse cultivation. In short, it has already become very hard for us to pick out or tell from daily life which foods are in season; what is more, modern people's ever-growing food choices seem not to have brought more health.
At this point, we must think about "why these fruits and vegetables can be bought in all four seasons," and "how the fruits, vegetables, fish and meat that come from all over the world are produced, and how they arrive before us." Teacher Youting first led with an interesting, self-developed seasonal fruit-and-vegetable psychology, then moved on to another theme - the benefits of "local fruits and vegetables" - and finally had the participants discuss the sharing and planning of each of our meals.
◎Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables - Vegetable Psychology
We know that fresh, clean food is mostly produced under the right timing and the right place, and seasonal fruits and vegetables, as the name suggests, are the crops that are most suited to being abundant in this season; in other words, in this season, seasonal vegetables will not suffer overly serious pest and disease damage, so that even farmland farmed by conventional agriculture needs no heavy spraying of pesticides, and the vegetables can grow very well and yield very abundantly. Through the concept of seasonality, by linking the relationships among vegetables, people, land and the climatic environment, Teacher Youting explained it in an anthropomorphic and mutually considerate way: "Why seasonal fruits and vegetables like this season, and what kind of bounty these crops provide from the earth for people," letting us naturally come to know, and then understand, the close relationship between seasonal crops and ourselves.
In spring, although it is gradually warming up, the weather is often changeable (as in the proverb "spring weather is like a stepmother's face"), so some "cold-fearing" fruits and vegetables are still hiding in the soil (napa cabbage, loquat, onion, radish, Chinese yam, etc.), while the increasingly warm sunshine draws leafy greens and bamboo shoots to break through the soil (makino bamboo shoots, asparagus, etc.) and enjoy the sun. By summer, vine fruits and vegetables (loofah, bitter melon, cucumber, etc.) have developed the ability to climb in order to get more sunbathing. And because Taiwan's summers are rainy, we can also see many "water-loving" fruits and vegetables (watermelon, pineapple, melons, etc.) catching this good timing. In autumn, fruits and vegetables preparing for winter (potato, taro, water caltrop, etc.) accumulate energy in the form of starch to cope with the slightly cool weather, and vegetables also put on thin gauze (lettuce types, Taiwanese lettuce). When winter comes, Taiwan is mostly cold and short of water, so our fruits and vegetables use thick leaves or root, stem and fruit to keep out the cold and retain water (cabbage, bok choy, garland chrysanthemum, Chinese cabbage types, cauliflower, etc.).
Besides the little inner voices of the fruits and vegetables, we are additionally grateful to the earth that nurtures all things for satisfying people's needs in every season: spring fruits and vegetables are, as if by magic, mostly mild in nature, regulate the qi and moisten the lungs, and can protect the respiratory tract, caring for people who easily catch colds and have sore throats in this season. Summer fruits and vegetables are full of large amounts of vitamins and minerals, which can let us cool off, relieve heat and dispel the summer heat in hot weather, and also help us adjust to heatstroke or poor appetite! Autumn fruits and vegetables provide people with the sources of energy they need to replenish. And winter prepares rich vitamin C and calories for humans, such as citrus fruits; vegetables suitable for cooking hot pot also raise people's body resistance!
Through the metaphors and stories of vegetable psychology, the participants naturally built up a clear understanding of seasonal fruits and vegetables, and gained a bit more affection, thanking them for their dedication and for their consideration of the people living on this land!
◎"A banana a day, keeps the doctor away"-What do you eat?
Finally, returning to that "what should we eat," Teacher Youting brought out the my plate, a newly developed American recommendation for the proportion of intake of various food groups, used to replace the former food pyramid. Here, Professor Zhang Weiqi of National Hsinchu University of Education reminded us to pay attention to how to correspond to Taiwan's dietary habits, because we do not eat "a piece of meat" per meal like Americans do; we usually mix it with vegetables, such as shredded pork stir-fried with bamboo shoots, and so on, so it still needs to be converted.
The activity flow was that each group received a set of fruit-and-vegetable cards; first they had to distinguish the peak season of the fruits and vegetables on the picture cards, then arrange delicious seasonal local menus (the Taiwan version of my plate) according to spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively, and then share them with the other groups.
When reporting on stage, every group was very distinctive, and not only seasonal but also local! I remember everyone chattering away about how my rice came from Yilan or from a certain elementary school in Beitou, while the meat for the scallion stir-fried pork came from Sanzhi, the scallions from Yilan, and the fruit had also been shipped over from Yangmingshan, Yilan and other places closest to us... Although the participants were mostly a group of adults, food and farming education is precisely about rebuilding the connection between people and the land, and we truly drew an abundance of strength from one another. In the future, we also hope to bring this feeling of being moved to more people, so that amid everyone's busy, hurried lives, perhaps they too can experience the warmth of the earth and the temperature of the land.