Hsinchu Puhe Elementary School Students Learn About "Food Miles" Through Red Bean Cakes

One idea can be presented in a hundred ways. Wu You, an elementary school principal who has long promoted food and agriculture education, previously promoted a school lunch reform at Hexing Elementary School in Hukou Township, Hsinchu County, forming an alliance with three nearby elementary schools to jointly procure food and eat organic lunches together. Last year she was transferred back to her alma mater, Puhe Elementary School in Xinfeng Township, Hsinchu County, and continued to promote food and agriculture education. Recently, during Children's Day activities, she used "red bean cakes" as a medium to hold a small food and agriculture class where students could eat while they learned.

Freshly baked red bean cakes attract children's curiosity

For this year's Children's Day activity, Puhe Elementary School principal Wu You combined local resources and invited a local red bean cake vendor from Xinfeng, Ms. Zhang, a young person who returned to her hometown, to come to the school to bake red bean cakes fresh and explain the story of the ingredients on site.

Ms. Zhang sells red bean cakes on the street in Xinfeng and is quite particular about ingredients, focusing on local, reassuring ingredients, which is how she became acquainted with principal Wu You, who has long paid attention to food, agriculture, and environmental issues.

During the Children's Day activity, Ms. Zhang brought her livelihood equipment to the school to bake red bean cakes fresh. This was like an important "opening move" in many teaching methods, first arousing a high degree of curiosity among the students.

In the process of baking the red bean cakes fresh, Ms. Zhang explained the steps for making red bean cakes while introducing the various ingredients used in them. For example, the red beans came from organic red beans from Wandan, Pingtung; the taro was a local crop from Hukou, Hsinchu; the butter was made by simmering milk powder; and the flour came to Taiwan by ship from Canada.

(This article was sponsored by the Jianzhen Environmental Education Foundation for personnel expenses, but with no interference at all in news topic selection or interview writing, ensuring news independence.)