Kids as Food Heroes: A New Way to Eat in China    

   

Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean EnergyShanghai, China

JUCCCE is a non-profit creating a liveable China because environmental disaster is the biggest issue facing China, and the world. China’s massive migration into new cities, industry’s thirst for energy, and boom of its consumer class

threaten to deplete the world’s natural resources and leave our children with an uninhabitable planet.

We seek out the best people and bring them together to create innovative solutions. We search the world for solutions that can scale up in China at gigascale, gigapace, and low cost. We have a talent for focusing on China’s

“acupuncture points” to accelerate the greening of China.

For more information, contactA New Way to Eat Program Director Lucy Luo

lucyluo@juccce.org

For updates on the program, visit www.juccce.org/eat

July 2015

© JUCCCE 聚思

Contributors:Peggy Liu, Lucy Luo, Finola Hackett, Margaret Lane, Paul Liu, Laurelin Haas,

Caroline Juang, Jessica Min, Rodrigo Saavedra, Alexandra Wong, Jean Walsh

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Children can save their health

and the planet’s by becoming Food Heroes

‘A New Way to Eat’, an initiative launched by non-profit organization JUCCCE, is setting out to change the way Chinese children eat through China’s first food education program built to integrate nutrition and sustainability. Chinese children are in a health crisis. Overconsumption, western diets and sedentary lifestyles in urban areas have created an alarming rise of obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases. In one generation, the percentage of Chinese children who are overweight skyrocketed from 5% to 20%. China accounts for one-fifth of the world’s population, but a disproportionately high one-third of the world’s diabetes patients. The increasing healthcare costs to treat these diseases threaten to bankrupt the economy. China needs to shift its focus from treating diseases to preventing them. China’s health crisis is also a planetary one. Globally, food is the single biggest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In China’s rising middle class, overconsumption, waste, and an increasing demand for meat and dairy

are straining the environment. The good news is that children can make a difference to climate change through their stomachs. China has no formal food education program. A better future is within reach, but China must act to improve diet habits now.

A New Way to Eat teaches children how to eat in a way that is good for them and good for the planet. It has three components: a new ‘Food Hero Eating Framework’ tailored to children, an innovative play-based school curriculum, and healthy, tasty, and affordable school lunch recipes.

China has 15% of the global population of primary school children, yet it is hardly alone in this perfect storm of dietary and planetary challenges. Around the world, children can be food heroes by eating better. They can tackle both threats at the same time to create a healthier future – and have fun doing so.

“This food education program could be the single most impactful

intervention on children’s health.”

Brett RiersonWorld Food Programme Representative in China

“The new cohort of Chinese kids from this millennium is truly the unhealthy generation.” Barry Popkin MD PhD*

W. R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of NutritionUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health

Cheng Wei’s favourite thing to buy after class is milk tea with tapioca pearls. She loves the rush of sweetness and the fun of going out to buy it with her friends.

Her family uses their apartment kitchen to refrigerate drinks and boil instant noodles, but rarely to cook fresh meals. Between her schoolwork and parents’ full time jobs, eating out is nothing special, simply a part of their routine.

Every week, Ming Liang asks his parents to take him to KFC. They order a bucket of fried chicken, which he chows down with gusto. To him, it is just as tasty as his next favorite food: McDonald’s burgers.

He is growing up in a city of 6.5 million people, surrounded by construction and grey concrete boxes. He can buy fried dumplings from a street vendor, but barely recognizes what a vegetable looks like in the ground.

Cheng Wei and Ming Liang may only be primary school students, but the pressure to get into a good university is already weighing heavily on them. From dawn to dusk, they are at school or doing homework. This leaves little time for exercise or playing outside. Despite all the time spent studying, neither has learned about a fundamental aspect of their well-being: the food that goes into their stomachs.

Li Cheng Wei, 10Shenzhen

Chen Ming Liang, 6Nanjing

* Personal correspondence. May 2015.

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“ ‘From famine to gluttony in a generation’ is how one dietician in Guangzhou phrased it to me.”

Paul French*Author of Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines Will Change a Nation

As a young woman sent to rural China during the 1970s, Feng Mei had no meat in her meals. Each New Year, the government sent her household frozen raw eggs so they could celebrate with egg dumplings. Today she can indulge in meat daily.

She is still amazed by the variety of packaged snack brands she can buy at her neighborhood supermarket. She finds joy in treating her grandchildren to packaged snacks without realizing the health consequences.

Hao Long likes going out to eat, frequently ordering more food than his family can finish in one sitting. He feels proud that he can provide this amount of food for his family, something he’d never dreamed of as a child.

Since China has seen a slew of food scandals, Hao Long trusts multinational food brands. But last year expired meat was sold to chains like McDonald’s and KFC. If he can’t trust the big brands, where can he turn for ‘safe’ food for his children?

Qian Feng Mei, 79Shanghai

Zhang Hao Long, 48Chongqing

* How are Policymakers Tackling Rising Obesity in China? The Guardian. 12 February 2015.

The Challenge of Processed Food

Most urban Chinese youth are growing up without an awareness of real food. Their parents never learned how to cook. Their grandparents did not have enough food to eat.

Chinese have adopted modern food habits and sedentary lifestyles during a period of unprecedented economic growth and urbanization. Projected to be history’s largest urbanization shift, there will be 1 billion urban dwellers by 2030.1 Traditional family meals at home have been replaced with a culture of eating out and unhealthy packaged goods.Today, children in Shanghai, Beijing, and Chongqing consume 28% of their calories from packaged processed food.5

City dwellers with rapidly rising incomes can afford an abundance of food with greater

variety. It is now cheaper and more convenient for them to buy a dizzying array of processed foods, as food stalls and shops line every street. Sales of processed foods and beverages with high quantities of fat, salt, and sugar have grown at more than twice the rate of fresh fruit and vegetable sales over the last 15 years.4

Supermarkets, fast food chains, and convenience stores are expanding across the country to fill the needs of today’s fast-paced urban lifestyle. Only 29% of urban consumers still shop at traditional ‘wet markets’.3 On the other hand, China’s first supermarket opened in 1990, and by 2002 there were over 53 000, the fastest growth rate in the world.2

Wasteful HabitsCheap food options are abundant. KFC is the leading fast food franchise across China.6 The

This generation is disconnected from

their food:accustomed to

processed foods, eating out, and

excessive waste.

Through education, young consumers can be influential

advocates for healthy eating and lead China

into a sustainable future.

China’s Diet Dilemma

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Chinese market for eating out has grown 159-fold from 1978 to 2008.7 This trend of eating out has exacerbated the issue of food waste. Wasting food is a symptom of growing affluence, particularly in China where over-ordering food is a way to show generosity and respect to guests. Although food losses have historically been greatest in the Chinese food supply chain, consumer food waste is on the rise.8

In some restaurants, food waste is one-fifth of what is ordered, and at some university canteens, nearly one-third of food is wasted.8 Food waste in China has an estimated footprint of 135 billion meters cubed of water (the water footprint of Canada), and 26 million hectares of land (the total arable land area of Mexico).9

A Changing Chinese Diet

With the rise of the middle class (an estimated 800 million by 2025),10 consumption of edible oils

and animal products, such as meat and dairy, has also rapidly increased. Total meat consumption in China has increased 10 times over 40 years from 7.6 million tons in 1975, to 77.6 million tons in 2013.11 Milk, which was nearly absent from the traditional Chinese diet, has grown in production by 16 times since 1978.12

A typical modern family consists of two parents and four grandparents doting on a single child. A survey of Chinese households found that parents were twice as willing to purchase food and beverages requested by the child compared to an average American household.13 Yet a lack of food education means children are not armed with enough knowledge to make healthy and sustainable food choices. A New Way to Eat steps into this void to help children prepare themselves for a long, healthy life.

China’s Diet Dilemma

28%The percentage of calories consumed by Shanghai children that come from

packaged processed food5

1/5Fraction of food ordered at restaurants

that is eventually wasted8

77.6Millions of tons of meat consumed in

2013 in China, a ten-fold increase in 40 years11

Meat as condiment Meat as main

Water, Green tea Milk, Bubble tea, Coffee

Fruits Sweet pastries

Wet markets Supermarkets

Home-cooked meals Eating out

Traditional Modern Consequences

A generation of people accustomed to famine are now bombarded with modern and Western food choices. Urban China has moved from food poverty to food wealth. The traditional diet of vegetables, rice, noodles, and small portions of meat - once hailed as the world’s healthiest diet - is disappearing.

Food Habits in Decline

More heavy-impact red meat

More non-fructose and refined sugars

More artificial sweeteners

More sugarsMore heavy-impact

dairy

More processed foods instead of

local and seasonal foods

More processed foods

More sugars, salts, fats, and oils

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Pei Qi is attracted to the brightly packaged foods available at the stalls lining the streets outside her school gate. For just a few coins, she can buy colorful candies and

fried dough sticks covered in icing sugar.

Hong Pei Qi, 7 Guizhou province

Around 45% of China’s population lives in rural areas today.14 While urban children suffer from overconsumption, rural children may not meet basic nutritional needs. To try to fill the nutrition gap, the Chinese government subsidizes school lunches for rural children 4 RMB (about 70 cents USD) per child each day.15

Though city and village children eat very differently, they both increasingly consume heavily processed foods full of chemical additives. These are cheap and readily available, even for rural children. If they have a daily allowance they may choose to spend it on sugary or salty processed snacks that only cost 1-2 RMB (about 25 cents USD). The foods are brightly packaged, flavorful, and very attractive to children who do not understand their damaging health effects and resulting plastic waste.

Despite their differences, rural and urban children both need education on the negative impacts of ‘garbage foods’ that hurt their bodies and the planet.

Not Just an Urban Problem

“The rate of change of Chinese overweight status is one of the most rapid in the world.”

China has one-fifth of the world’s population but one-third of the world’s diabetic patients.16

Nearly 15% of Chinese children are pre-diabetic.17

The prevalence of obese and overweight children has more than quadrupled in the past 35 years.18 Over 30 million school-age Chinese children are now overweight.19

* Popkin BM. Will China’s nutrition transition overwhelm its health care system and slow

economic growth? Health Affairs. 2008; 27(4): 1064-1076.

Barry Popkin PhD*W. R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Nutrition

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health

A Double Crisis: Personal and Planetary Health

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“…we need to safeguard the very life-supporting systems that are paramount for our food production by reducing the environmental footprint of our diets.”

Johan Rockström PhDExecutive Director

Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm UniversityChair of EAT Advisory Board

Walter Willett MD PhDChair, Department of Nutrition

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Gunhild Stordalen MD PhD*

Director, EAT Initiative/EAT Stockholm Food Forum

Agriculture accounts for 61% of China’s water

withdrawals20 and more than half of China’s water

pollution. 21

Up to 25% of China’s greenhouse gas emissions

come from agriculture: that is 5% of the world’s

total emissions.10

* Rockström J, Willett W, Stordalen G. An American Plate That Is Palatable for Human and Planetary Health. Huffington Post. 26 March 2015.

A Double Crisis: Personal and Planetary Health

China’s dietary shift has taken place in a short timespan and created an alarming rise of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. The proportion of overweight and obese children in China rose from less than 5% in 1980 to nearly 20% in 2013.18 15-20% of school-age children are overweight or obese, including 5-9% who are obese.19, 23-26

Rising obesity rates are putting Chinese adults and children at risk for chronic illnesses such as diabetes. Chinese bodies are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of unhealthy food choices. Research shows that Asians are at higher risk than other ethnicities for developing diabetes, heart disease, and other weight-related illness at the same body mass.27 As a result, a third of all diabetics live in China, even though China is a fifth of the world’s population.16

In 2009, an estimated 1.7 million Chinese children aged 7-17 were diabetic, and 27.7 million were pre-diabetic.17 In 2010, the prevalence of diabetes among Chinese adults was 11.6%, or 113.9 million people. Only a quarter of

diabetes patients in China received treatment.16

Per-capita medical spending is 24% higher for obese individuals.28 Diabetes imposes a particularly heavy economic burden. A 2008-2010 survey found that 13% of all medical expenditures in China are directly caused by diabetes.29 Diabetes also becomes increasingly expensive to treat in later stages. As nearly 70% of diabetes cases are undiagnosed,16 China is missing the opportunity to treat patients more cost-effectively.

Obesity early in life sets up children for a lower quality of life in the future. Cardiometabolic risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol make children susceptible to chronic illnesses such as heart disease later in life. Overweight and obese children are more likely to experience depression and other psychosocial complications.30

The spread of the obesity epidemic also threatens Chinese children’s lifespans. Research in the U.S. suggests that obesity-related illnesses could slow or even reverse the steady increase in longevity.31

This may be the first generation of children whose expected lifespans are shorter than their parents’.31

“The sudden rise of diabetes in China is not only a health threat, but an

economic one. It could bankrupt the country’s healthcare system. China

needs to shift its focus from treating diabetes to preventing it.”22

Xu Zhangrong MD PhDDeputy Secretary

China Diabetes Society

Weighing in Medical Concerns

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Chinese children know that climate change is a dire issue, but they do not know how they can make a difference. Simply by eating healthier (fewer animal products and processed snacks, more fruits and vegetables), children can reduce their personal emissions by an impressive 40%.32

Only when this generation of children starts to eat with a lighter impact does the world stand a chance to sustainably feed a global population of 9 billion by 2050.33-36

LandThe government is concerned with food security because China has one-fifth of the world’s population but just 7% of global arable land.37 China’s limited fertile soils are being degraded. Nearly one-fifth of China’s arable land is polluted to some degree.38 Increased use of chemical fertilizers has boosted agricultural productivity, but has driven a doubling of soil acidification in the past 30 years.39 The use of chemical fertilizers in China has increased 6 times since 1975 and is more than 4 times the world average.21, 40-41

WaterChina is a dry country: it has only one-third of the global average per capita supply of freshwater.42 While 400 of China’s 662 cities are short of drinking water,43 agriculture uses 61% of China’s water withdrawals.44 At current rates, China will run out of water by 2030, with a projected shortfall of 199 billion cubic meters.42 In addition, agriculture contaminates China’s water sources through fertilizer runoff and poor manure management.45 This nutrient pollution causes harmful algal blooms.

EmissionsChina’s food system accounts for an astounding 20-25% of national emissions, or 4-5% of global emissions. This includes direct emissions from crop and livestock production, as well as food processing and transport.10 Meat and dairy production is the biggest culprit of food emissions. Worldwide, it accounts for 14.5% of total GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, more than all forms of transport combined.46 China is now the world’s biggest meat consumer and China’s projected growth in meat consumption to 2020 is over 20 million tons.46 In China, livestock production and manure management directly contribute 6% of GHG emissions.10

Graph adapted from Earth Policy Institute - www.earth-policy.org* Mekonnen M, Hoekstra A. A Global Assessment of the Water Footprint of Farm Animal Products. Ecosystems. 2012; 15(3): 401-415.** Environmental Working Group. Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change and Health. 2011.*** Mekonnen M, Hoekstra A. The Green, Grey, and Blue Water Footprint of Crops and Derived Crop Products, Vol. 1: Main Report. UNESCO-IHE Value of Water Research Report Series. 2010; 47(1): 1-31; Plate, Tiffany. Tofu’s Carbon Footprint. 2009. <http://tofuscarbonfootprint.weebly.com/>.

China has some of the world’s least efficient farming practices. Growing demand for food from rising incomes strains China’s limited land and water resources. The graph on the left shows rising levels of meat consumption in China, while the graph on the right shows the average water used and greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted while producing these food sources as well as a protein alternative, tofu.

Growing Planetary Costs

Food safety ranks very high on people’s list of daily concerns in China. Industrialization of the food system, lack of food producer accountability, and environmental contamination have made food safety scares frequent occurrences. Food contamination due to fraud and taking shortcuts in food production has destroyed consumer trust.10

In the Sanlu scandal of 2008, melamine-tainted milk formula killed six Chinese infants and hospitalized 300 000.47 In 2014, police exposed a Shanghai firm supplying rotten or expired meat to fast food chains.48 Recycled ‘gutter oil’ has appeared in restaurants,49 stale buns have been repackaged and resold,50 and thousands of hastily disposed diseased pigs have flooded rivers.51

For many Chinese consumers, food brands which maintain control of their supply chains and follow health and safety standards are ‘healthy’ choices, despite how processed or fat- and sugar- laden the foods may be. Parents frequently distrust local food industries and associate multinational brands, like fast-food chains, with better food regulations and safer food.52-53

Part of the curriculum of A New Way to Eat covers food safety, including identifying potential health risks in commerical food preparation and encouraging Chinese children to practice safe habits when making food at home. In a society where food scares are frequent, children can educate themselves and others about safer eating.

“Basically, people now feel nothing is safe to eat. They

don’t know what choices to make. They are really feeling

very helpless.”50

Sang LiweiDirector of the Beijing office

Global Food Safety Forum

Xian Mei Li, a Shanghai mother, treats her five-year old to a Kentucky Fried Chicken meal weekly. She mistakes it as a reliable ‘healthy’ option for her son. She

knows fried food is damaging, but she trusts KFC will use real cooking oil rather than

expired or tainted ingredients.

Chinese sanitation workers fish out diseased, dead pigs from the Huangpu River in Shanghai in March 2013

Food Fears Safety Scares Drive Unhealthy Habits

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Food safety scares persist in part due to fragmentation of the complex food system and weak government policies. But food policy reform is high on China’s priority list.

In the wake of high-profile scandals, China has announced tough amendments to the 2009 ‘Food Safety Law’ and ‘Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Law’.54 Upcoming changes in October 2015 include severe criminal penalties and new requirements for caterers, online food markets, food storages and transportation.55 Yet regulations remain difficult to enforce. Recent audits of food facilities in China revealed that nearly half do not meet adequate safety standards.56

State intervention in China can be strong enough to shift deeply-ingrained social customs.Recently, activists in Beijing launched the ‘Empty Plate’ initiativee targeting food waste culture.

The government backed the campaign by limiting extravagant public banquets as part of a crackdown on government indulgence, helping it gain widespread attention.57-58

China’s current dietary guidelines were created in 1989 and last updated in 2007.59 The visual representation of the Chinese ‘Food Guide Pagoda’ was modeled after the now-retired Western food pyramid. The current eating guidelines do not, however, take cultural differences in diet into account and are difficult for consumers to understand and apply.

China lacks nutrition expertise. According to China’s National Institute of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, the country has only 10 000 qualified nutritionists nationwide, but needs at least 4 million.4

The Chinese Nutrition Society (CNS) is updating China’s national nutrition guidelines in 2016, the first update since 2007.60 Major updates include design revisions of the food pagoda and creating specific guidelines for various age groups. ‘A New Way to Eat’ working with CNS on creating fun, engaging content for the children’s edition. The importance of sustainable food choices will also be briefly mentioned but are not at the forefront of the guidelines.

Updating nutritional guidelines is a key first step, but these guidelines must then be integrated into school curriculum nationwide. While the Chinese government has experimented with some health education programs, such as a nationwide school milk campaign, none have comprehensively targeted child nutrition.61 The current education system, which focuses solely on academic performance, does not offer food education.

This is where A New Way to Eat steps in. The program aims to catalyze dietary behavioral change in a fun and innovative way, teaching Chinese children to take care of their own bodies and the environment.

The Chinese Food Pagoda

Chinese schools stress high grades, but lack a formal food education program to teach students how to fuel their bodies as they learn and study

Putting Food on the Policy TableChinese Food Regulation and Education

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Open and Prepared to Change Chinese people are ready for a new food education program

Food Safety Prompts Desire For Food Education

High-profile food scandals have made food safety the number one concern

in China. Food education does not exist, but parents and children are

keen to know more about where their food comes from.

Learn From The Old

Chinese consumers want new diets combining the best of East and West:

healthy traditional Chinese cuisine and wellness concepts, with the latest in modern nutrition and sustainability

research.

Willing To Try New Diets

Consumers have adopted new behaviors and tastes rapidly. Parents

are eager to try new healthy food choices for themselves and their

children as they seek to achieve a higher quality of life.

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Open and Prepared to Change Chinese people are ready for a new food education program

Food Policy Reform Is Underway

Government institutions can drive consumer change through top-down, nationwide campaigns. China is revising its nutritional framework and is open to combining health and sustainability.

Academics As An Incentive

Teachers have a larger influence on childrens’ behavior than in Western societies. Parents are eager to learn about anything that will enable their children to perform better in school. Incorporating English into the curriculum motivates parents to support food literacy education.

Eating Is A Social Activity

Eating together lies at the heart of social bonding in China. Changing social norms have a domino effect in China. Teaching the child caninfluence the parents and grandparents.

“EAT Forum is working closely with JUCCCE because every country, not just China, needs an education program for kids promoting healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Consumer education to change social norms on diets and actual eating behavior is critical to feeding 9 billion people by 2050.”

Gunhild A Stordalen MD PhD Director, EAT Initiative/EAT Stockholm Food Forum

 

A New Way to Eat is China’s first food education program built to integrate nutrition and sustainability. It was initiated by the Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy (JUCCCE) and then launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2013. The curriculum and recipes are still in the process of development and field-testing.

A New Way to Eat has three components:

Make nutrition and sustainability jargon child-friendly, actionable, and culturally appropriate

Teach children to enjoy real food and be smarter food consumers

Provide school cafeterias with 100 recipes tested on children for a variety of budgets

Create a significant shift in food preferences

2Play-based

primary school activities across

multiple subjects

3Healthy, tasty, and affordable school lunch

recipes

Change the way Chinese children eat

1A new ‘Food Hero Eating Framework’ designed for

children

Reach every corner of a child’s universe with a multi-channel food education experience

The program aims for the next generation of Chinese children to be food literate. Children will learn where their food comes from, how it is made, how to eat for both good grades and good health, and how their choices can protect their planet. Parents will become informed advocates for sustainable food systems that nourish their children.

In the long term, the program aims to drive a decline in child obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and other diet-related conditions. China can lead a global shift towards healthy and sustainable food systems.

Aim for China to adopt the new eating framework principles

Aim for schools across the country to integrate activities into their curricula

Use school lunches to model the principles of A New Way to Eat

Approach Goal

A Holistic Dietary Change Program Teaching Nutritious and Eco-friendly Eating Habits

Our Vision: A Healthier China

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The program is designed for children in order to create societal-scale change in the way they eat. This generation of children can improve personal health and planetary wealth with smarter food choices.

The last generation of Chinese children were born into a vacuum of food knowledge and lack of food variety. Today’s adults’ food habits were shaped by the influx of Western-style processed convenience foods. But now they are willing to try new things, pay for quality, and learn what can make them and their children healthier. By educating primary school children, programs like this can reach children at a critical stage before they develop unhealthy habits that last into adulthood.62

The window of opportunity is short, but it is possible to incentivize young children to eat healthier foods.63-64 By middle school, food habits become set and increasingly influenced by peers and marketing rather than teachers and parents.65

Integrating sustainability and nutrition for children requires a move away from traditional schoolbooks. More engaging approaches make children feel empowered to make a significant difference in the world through their stomachs.

A new Food Hero Eating Framework helps children connect their food choices to their health and the planet’s health. It translates the latest nutritional and environmental guidance into personal language and asks children to change their diets in tangible, practical ways. Tactile, play-based activities progressively teach children how to enjoy real food and become smarter consumers.

The Eating Framework is culturally relevant for China, combining healthy traditional Chinese concepts with the latest in Western research on nutrition and sustainability. For example, the concept of hot and cold in Traditional Chinese Medicine avoids ‘heated’ food such as fried and heavily processed food.

Teachers can customize activities for their students’ needs and integrate them into any subject class. A New Way to Eat lesson plans are designed to be inserted within multiple subjects. For example, in math class, students can calculate the resource impact of a kilogram of beef compared to spinach. A science student can see how cola disintegrates an eggshell overnight.

The program learns from branded character media and merchandising models, using lovable characters to reach out to children across a variety of channels, including mobile and video.

“A New Way to Eat’s kid-friendly, appealing, and play-based approach is exactly what is needed to engage,

educate, and equip our children to both live healthier lives and become

globally responsible citizens.”Laura Jana MD FAAP

Pediatrician, Director of Innovation, University of Nebraska College of Public Health

“This program is looking at a critical age group. Gamification of content is

beyond what others have done and quite unique. No one else is linking food choices to sustainability at the

elementary level.”Walter Willett MD PhD

Chair, Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Youth Food Education Program

Innovative Play-based Approach

1. Food fuels my mind and body

Pay attention to how the food you eat helps you grow, learn, and play. Eat three small meals and two snacks a day, starting with a healthy breakfast. Sit down and enjoy your food with friends and family. A Food Hero can stay alert by not overeating. Drink lots of water throughout the day.

2. Quality foods and exercise make me healthy and happy

Know which foods are good for your body and which ones are bad. Eat good foods first. Eat a variety of colors and textures of foods. Be open to trying new foods. A Food Hero transforms food into fuel by exercising every day.

3. I can make my world a better place by eating healthier

Food Heroes protect the environment by eating more greens and less meat. Learn where your food comes from, how it is prepared, and how it is grown. Eat food that’s in abundance, not endangered animals. Eat fruits and veggies that are local and seasonal. Don’t take more than you can eat.

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Guiding Every MouthfulThe Food Hero Rules are at the core of the curriculum framework for A New Way to Eat. Themes within the curriculum each fall under one of the 3 Food Hero Rules, all translated into ‘kidspeak’ to teach children about , and how food production affects the environment. Age-appropriate activities in each lesson engage children’s imaginations while teaching them important concepts about eating and healthy lifestyles.

“Napoleon concluded that an army marches on its stomach. Peggy Liu, equally determined but I suspect likely to be more successful long term, believes that each generation learns a good deal through its stomach. I love how she and her team are working to give young people an appetite for sustainability.”

John ElkingtonExecutive Chairman, Volans Ventures,

Honorary Chairman of SustainAbility

The Eating TableThe Eating Table is an example of a lesson taught in the curriculum. It incorporates nutrition, fitness, sustainability, and the social aspects of eating into a single, cohesive framework. Food Heroes are encouraged to eat plant-based, real food, and eat in moderation. Planet-friendly adjectives such as ‘abundant’ are added to seafood and ‘seasonal’ to fruits and vegetables.A ‘damaging’ category includes foods bad for children’s bodies, but also bad for the planet.The eating table has four food categories:

Eat First and Full – By eating these fresh, real foods with minimal processing until mostly full, you will eat less of other foods.Eat Sparingly – Eat these foods but not too much. Damaging Food – Avoid these foods that are damaging to your health and to the environment around you.Garbage Food – Don’t eat these products that are so processed and laden with additives that they barely resemble food.

Note that the Eating Table is distinct from traditional eating guidelines such as the food pyramid. Categories are not broken down by food groups or macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates and fat) but by nutrient content and planetary impact. For example, brown rice and white rice are in different categories, as are chicken and beef.

EAT FIRST AND FULLLocal, seasonal vegetables & fruits LegumesNuts, seedsTofu, eggsWhole grainsWater

GARBAGE FOODChemically processed food Fried foodFatty meatSugary drinks

EAT SPARINGLYWhite grains Abundant seafood Lean meatsDairyGood oils and fatsSauces and condiments

DAMAGING FOODHeavy impact Uncooked meat Polluted food Endangered food

A major barrier to global action on nutrition and sustainability crises has been the inability to communicate complex concepts to people on a personal level. This is why the key to A New Way to Eat’s success is translating daunting jargon of sustainable agriculture and nutritional knowledge to ‘kidspeak’, language which children can understand and act on. This challenge cannot be underestimated – to achieve societal-scale behavior change, a food education program must engage, entertain, and finally ask children to make real changes to their daily food habits.

First, a complex teaching concept is identified and turned into a memorable meme. Eating a variety of fresh foods is important for personal health by ensuring adequate micronutrient intake, and

for planetary health by protecting biodiversity. But these concepts are far removed from a child’s daily reality: to engage students they are simply transformed into ‘Eat A Rainbow Every Day’.

For each meme, activities are created which are not only fun but also achieve a learning goal. Children may jump around, compete in games, watch short videos, or get blindfolded to touch and smell mystery foods. A successful activity is one that children want to play over and over, earning ‘Food Hero’ certificates and of course lots of stickers. For instance, students learn to sing a song to encourage eating a ‘rainbow’ of diverse foods, a song so catchy they will be humming it even outside the classroom.

Playducation for a Dietary Revolution

Students with their Food Hero certificates Learning to make quick and easy fresh noodles as an alternative to instant noodles

Students learning to Eat a Rainbow Every Day by touching and tasting real food at Sproutworks

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Lastly, each lesson plan concludes with an actionable request: something children can easily identify and change in their daily diets. The program eliminates concepts that are not practical for children, such as counting calories. Rather, students’ ‘Eat A Rainbow’ homework may be to try a fresh fruit or vegetable they have never eaten before, or to bring a ‘show and tell’ photo of their meal with a rainbow of colors.

The development of A New Way to Eat’s curriculum is an iterative process. All activities are tested with children, teachers, and parents, and their feedback is integrated to continually improve the program. If a particular lesson plan does not resonate with the children, it is adjusted and tested again until just right.

Micronutrients and biodiversity

Food supply chain and environmental impacts

Processed foods/ chemical additives

Added sugar intake in beverages

Eat A Rainbow Every Day

I Know Where My Food Comes From

I Can’t Believe I Ate That

Icky Sticky Sugar

Guessing the name of each fruit and vegetable and filling in the poster with pictures

Placing flashcards in order from seed to dish to demonstrate how food becomes more processed

Showing a video of instant noodles and fresh noodles as they are digested in the stomach

Guessing how many sugar cubes are in each sugary drink

Eat a variety of fresh, real foods

Be aware of the steps taken and resources used to make food

Avoid eating heavily processed foods, eat plenty of fresh foods

Substitute sodas with (fruit) water(s)

“After we started holding A New Way to Eat activities at our restaurant, we’ve received an outpouring of requests for more healthy food education from parent and school organizations. We are on the brink of an undeniable food revolution in China.”

Kimberly WongDirector of Sproutworks

Turning Expertise into Education

Teaching Concept (jargon)

Memorable Meme

(‘kidspeak’)

Play-based Activity Practical Ask

Foundational FlashcardsFlashcards teach food literacy. They are the basis of many program activities. The flashcards teach basic food groups, the bilingual names of fruits and vegetables, and the difference between real and fake food. There are also flashcards that teach children about jobs in the food industry and the food supply chain. The food supply chain is illustrated by sets of flashcards, including farm to fork, seed to fork, and fish to fork.

In China, where half the country is still worried about getting food on the table and the other half remembers when they could not afford treats, quality food is low priority. How can children become interested in learning about long-term and complex health and sustainability issues?

The concerns of parents can act as backdoors to food education:

1. High-profile food scandals have made safety a major concern in families. Though China lacks food education, families are anxious to learn about where their food comes from. This is an entry point to talking about risks and innovations in food supply chains, hygiene, pollution, and pesticide use.

2. China is focusing on preparing more people for service jobs versus manual labor jobs. Learning about agricultural careers is a great way for children to personally connect to the food system.

3. The university entrance exam is extremely important in China, so most children study all the time with no room for exercise. Chinese students average 8.6 hours per day in the classroom, and in extreme cases, spend up to 12 hours in school.66 Parents want to find any way possible to boost their children’s grades, but they overlook the fact that healthy diets and lifestyles improve academic performance.67-70

4. Every parent is eager to have their child learn English because it could triple salary potential. A New Way To Eat’s bilingual flashcards are a great way to pick up English words while learning food literacy.

Finding Backdoors to Food Education

27

Farm to Fork

How Food Grows

Real vs Fake Food

Following the transformation of food from seed to dish

Understanding the food supply chain and environmental impacts along the path to the plate

Real food Changed a little Changed a lot

How food items vary in their levels of processing and addition of chemicals

Do You Know How Your Food is Grown?This is an example activity designed by A New Way to Eat for children in grades 1-3. It supplements the lesson I Know Where My Food Comes From, a part of the third Food Hero Rule ‘I can make my world a better place by eating healthier.’

In this activity, children take turns matching flashcards with pictures of food to the large poster of where the food is grown, whether the food is grown below ground, on the ground, on a stalk, or on a tree. The goal is to teach them about how the food they eat grows in nature.

Where Our Food Comes From poster

Putting flashcards on a Where Our Food Comes From poster to learn how food is grown

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Finally, A New Way to Eat hopes to use school lunches to model the principles of its curriculum. By working with school cafeterias, A New Way to Eat lets children live what they learn through healthy and flavorful lunches. Our goal is to provide schools with over 400 recipes of varying budgets that have been designed by local star chefs and tested on children. Four schools have begun using these recipes through Chartwells, which caters to a network of schools across China.

“Sustainability and nutrition are often presented as disjointed concepts, and rarely presented in a practical manner. If we succeed at explaining to a six-year-old what we are eating, we succeed at shaping healthier generations. Our cafeterias are a key part of the solution, that’s why we partnered with JUCCCE and actively contributed to A New Way to Eat.”

Stefano Bosello Head of Chartwells, China

(Left to right) Wang Hongbin of Dashu Wujie, Kimberly Ashton of Sprout Lifestyle, Scott Minoie of Element Fresh, Austin Hu of Madison

In addition to a school curriculum, children can understand what they are eating through hands-on science activities at home. A New Way to Eat publishes four pages of food-related science experiments in the monthly educational magazine. This magazine reaches a million children each month in second and third tier cities.

Past pages of science experiments published by JUCCCE in Chuang Xiang Hao magazine

Influencing School Lunches

Play with Food and Science

Scaling Up Reach

China’s schools lack formal food education. A New Way to Eat aims to be the go-to food curriculum for Chinese primary school children.

The program has been in development since 2013 and the first two years were spent creating the Food Hero Eating Framework with leading experts and developing the play-based methodology through field-testing activities. The pilot has rapidly expanded with the help of curriculum developers, recipe contributors and channel partners.

Basic curriculum and recipes will be fully developed within the next two years. All curriculum tools and recipes will be open source and free to use by teachers, parents, and caterers across the country. To reduce the need for training, each activity will have a teacher’s guide, how to videos and downloadable materials that can be printed.

A classroom setting allows for deeper use of curriculum over the school year. Children in China are taught to respect teachers as role models and so their messages greatly shape behavior. The pilot is currently learning from such in-school classes as Shanghai’s YK Pao school, and extracurricular programs at Talent Academy.

Food education must reach beyond the classroom and touch every corner of a child’s ecosystem to reinforce dietary changes. The challenge is to integrate food education across a variety of channels to reach children and their parents.

Chinese children develop food habits from exposure to school lunches and home cooking. Reforming school cafeterias and engaging parents can create significant change in their children’s behavior.

Activities for parents and children have already been held at restaurants such as Sproutworks, and will be expanded to company family days.

Future development plans include a TV show, merchandise line, and a mobile game that tracks changing food preferences.

The program will leverage other organizations’ channels to scale quickly once the curriculum is completed. XQKids (创想号), a subscription educational magazine that reaches one million children each month, already includes a four page A New Way To Eat layout in each issue. Program content will provide a source of educational activities for Chartwells Catering to roll out across its 40-plus schools in China. Discussions are also underway with a new rural teachers’ website and a health insurance portal to provide educational content.

China’s children are not alone in facing this double health and environmental crisis. The eating framework, curriculum and recipes are designed for local organizations to adapt and use freely in other regions. Children as food heroes worldwide have the power to create revolutionary change, starting from their next mouthful.

More information on the program can be found at http://www.juccce.org/eat

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AcknowledgmentsKey contributors: Peggy Liu (Chairperson, JUCCCE)David Agus MD (Professor of Medicine and Engineering at the University of Southern California, author of “The End of Illness”) Olivier Oullier (Professor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Aix-Marseille University)Walter Willett MD DrPH (Chair, Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)Barry Popkin PhD (W. R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health)Gunhild A Stordalen MD PhD (Director, EAT Initiative/EAT Stockholm Food Forum)Brett Rierson (Head, World Food Programme, China)Laura Jana MD FAAP (Director of Innovation, University of Nebraska College of Public Health)Kirk Bergstrom (President, WorldLink), Alan Dangour (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)Prof. Sir Andy Haines (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)Dr. Rosemary Green (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)Lili Jia (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)Prof. Hugh Montgomery (Director, UCL Inst for Human Health and Performance)John Elkington (Executive Chairman, Volans Ventures, Honorary Chairman of SustainAbility)Dr. Linda Friedland (Nutritionist, Australia)Fiona Gately (Nourish Communication)Dr. Tara Garnett (FCRN, Oxford University)Roy Ballam (Education Programme Manager, British Nutrition Foundation)Neil Lovell (CEO, Jamie Oliver Food Foundation)Juliane Caillouette Noble (School Programmes Manager, Jamie Oliver Food Foundation)Louise Holland (Deputy to Jamie Oliver, The Jamie Oliver Group)Anthony Lilley (Magic Lantern)Colin Bullen (Health at Work)Myles Bremner (School Food Plan)Katy Cooper (C3 Collaboration for Health)Christine Hancock (C3 Collaboration for Health)Tim Wang (CEO, Ecolab China)Magic Breakfast (UK)The End of the LineAnne Heughan (Unilever)Gae Redoblado (Unilever)Claire Hughes (Nutritionist, Marks & Spencer)Rasmus Taun (Photography)Kimberly Wong (Director of Sproutworks)Kimberly Ashton (Chief Officer, Sprout Lifestyle)Andrew Wong (Beach Creative)Lucy Guyard (Designer)

Kevin Ong (Designer)Kyle Mertensmeyer (Creative)Paul Iglesia (Creative)Malcolm CasselleMercedes Revy (Head, China Nutrition and Food Safety, World Health Organization, China)Lu Mai 卢迈 (Secretary General, China Development Research Foundation)Qian Zhang 张倩 (China Center for Disease Control)Antony Froggatt (Senior Research Fellow, Chatham House)Rob Bailey (Research Director, Chatham House)Prof. Yuexin Yang (President, China Nutrition Society)Prof. Liu Xin 刘新 (Tsinghua University)Prof. Yuan Bo 原博 (Tsinghua University)Stefano Bosello (Head, Chartwells Catering, China)Dana Jiang (Nutritionist, Chartwells Catering, China)Viktor Serafimov (Chartwells Catering, China)YB. Song (Founder, Dashu Wujie)Daisy Zhang (Element Fresh)Sandra Brown (Shanghai pilot school YK Pao)Graeme Kennedy (Director of Communications, Wellington College International Shanghai) Nicola Street (Teacher, Wellington College International Shanghai)Michelle Kolossy (Teacher, Wellington College International Shanghai)Alexandra Blake (Teacher, Wellington College International Shanghai) Cristina Ng (Teacher, Liaoyuan Elementary School)Malcolm Shu (Managing Partner, SproutWorks) QXKids 创想号 (Children’s educational magazine)EAT Forum Recipe contributors: Dashu Wujie restaurant, Element Fresh, Sprout Lifestyles (Kimberly Ashton), Farmhouse Juice (Uriel Copelev and Ena), Madison restaurant (Austin Hu), Awakening restaurant, Sproutworks

Thanks also to Project Directors: Lucy Luo, Charlie Mathews, Stephanie Marmier Researchers: Nicole Adler, Michelle Chan, Henry Chen, Jennie Chen, Olivia Chen, Wee Leng Cheong, Derek Dai, George Day-Reiss, Sabrina Devereaux, Meredith Fischer, Laurelin Haas, Finola Hackett, Nathan Hayes, Noel He, Michael Homer, Amy Hua, Sophia Hua, Vivian Huang, Michelle Jia, Caroline Juang, Jiao Chun Ting 焦骏婷, Margaret Lane, Diana Lee, Li Kai Yue 李恺悦, Li Zhuojun 李卓君, Lu Shanshan 陆珊珊, Luxi Liu, Paul Liu, Jessica Min, Rachel Mok, Calli Obern, Taylor Patrash, Kate Price, Rodrigo Saavedra, Seika Sanada-Martin, Claire Sun, Rebecca Tanda, Jean Walsh, Yale Wang, Alex Wong, Stephanie Wong, Sylvia Wong, Ju Yu, Xiao Yuan 肖媛, Alex Zheng, Mason McCormack, Cory McCormack

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