Learn4Health- New Innovation Approaches to Teaching Children about Food, Nutrition and Health

Increasingly, children experience a disconnection from understanding just where and how the food they are eating is produced. This tendency is a product of the nature of our globalized food systems, where we as consumers have hardly any interaction nor insight into the food we consume, until we meet it in the supermarket. This, of course, has an immense impact on food choices and eating habits, which might affect our health, our understanding of nutrition, the environment and ethical dilemmas such as fair trade and animal welfare. Reconnecting consumers, and especially children to the food they are consuming, and the natural world they inhabit, therefore, stands as a massively important task. For this reason, the Erasmus+ project, Learn4Health, was created. Learn4Health aims to communicate and disseminate a better understanding of food, food production, nutrition and health for pupils in primary and secondary schools. This is done by developing new and innovative teaching strategies and methods, where pupils are placed in concrete ‘hands-on’ learning contexts and activities. What is unique about the project is the constellation of partners; one higher educational institution or organization and one primary and/or secondary school working together – making this a truly interdisciplinary and multifaceted collaboration represent each of the six countries participating. In this paper, we intend to present the project and its approaches, discuss the findings and preliminary results, and, finally, present the strategies to secure the sustainability, transferability and dissemination of the project.