You are what you eat Erasmus Project

Project Title

You are what you eat

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

As a teacher one can observe that more and more children bring chips, sweets or coke to school considering this an adequate breakfast or lunch. However, they do not realize that this kind of unhealthy nutrition negatively effects their body and performance at school, and thereby also ultimately their results. It is widely known that preventive approaches are far more promising than dealing with or trying to cure the long-term damages. Seeing that some parents are no longer capable of teaching a healthy lifestyle to their children at home, though, it is the school’s responsibility to step in and educate children about food and a healthy lifestyle.
All participating partners have made that observation at their schools and have come to the conclusion mentioned above. Furthermore, it is agreed upon that an unhealthy lifestyle is not a nation-specific problem but rather a problem of industrial nations in general, which is why it should also be tackled internationally by exchanging of good practices and intercultural learning. For this project there will be a cooperation of four schools from the Czech Republic, Germany, North Macedonia and Portugal. All schools teach students with different social and ethnic backgrounds, that are not always beneficial. In some cases, this poses an even greater challenge, but also offers a huge pool of possibilities regarding ingredients, recipes and dining culture.
The primary goal must be to teach the students so that they can critically assess and evaluate the quality of certain aliments in order to make an informed decision when it comes to their own nutrition. Therefore, it is necessary that they learn about the basics of a healthy nutrition, the different kinds of nutrition there are, the origin and processing of food as well as a vast variety of recipes to choose from to keep eating interesting. Moreover, it is necessary that the students apply the knowledge they have gained actively to implement it into their daily lives.
To achieve the objectives listed above the major activities planned are to develop, evaluate and discuss a questionnaire, conduct different chemical experiments, try out different kinds of nutrition for a limited period of time, participate in workshops on how to eat healthily, attend lectures by nutritionists, visit local markets, food stores, farms and food factories, build raised garden beds, grow and harvest vegetables and herbs, and exchange recipes and cook them.
The knowledge gained by these activities is going to be used to create school-specific campaigns for a healthy diet, an informative traffic light food labeling system for selected popular foods at the different schools and how-to worksheets on methodological procedures. Moreover, it is planned to direct and produce a cooking show as well as to create a lifestyle book that combines favorite recipes, background information on the alignments and tips for a healthy lifestyle.
The methodology used to conduct the activities and create the products is going to be diverse. There will be different classroom forms like single, partner or group work, the conduction of experiments, lectures, quizzes and workshops. The three most important forms of methodology, however, are going to be project based learning and extracurricular learning in different places outside the school. All of this is interspersed with multimedia learning where appropriate.
By implementing all of the aforementioned, we, first of all, hope to see a change in thought in the participating students which ultimately is supposed to lead to a change in behavior. With this, we would like the participating students to function as role models, passing on their knowledge to their friends and other school members, thereby, also changing their eating habits and improving their performance which eventually leads to better results and an improvement of the schools’ statuses. Moreover, we also hope that students start educating their parents, making the whole family reflect upon and conclusively change their eating habits. This then might lead to a change in consumerism, where, of course, the demand determines the offer. Be that as it may, a change in demand hopefully leads to a change in the offer; on the school level as well as on the food store level.
In the long run, we wish for the project results to be used as a basis for subsequent projects, regarding for instance the topic of waste.
School’s responsibility is to educate students so that they can critically assess and evaluate issues and act autonomously based on an informed decision. Regarding nutrition the threats and benefits of an unhealthy or healthy lifestyle are colossal. Obese, malnutritioned people are less productive, more prone to diseases, therefore more expensive for the healthcare system and in general less content and happy with their life. Contributing to a positive change, even if it is just in a small group of people, can be considered helpful and worth pursuing.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 127112 Eur

Project Coordinator

Integrierte Gesamtschule “Bertolt Brecht” & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Agrupamento de Escolas de Maximinos
• OOU Petar Pop Arsov
• Zakladni skola Pacov