Education: Cooking up an interest in food

A campaign was launched today to promote cooking and learning about food in schools.

The initiative, by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, will be called Focus on Food and begin in the New Year, with sponsorship from Waitrose, the supermarket chain.

Plans for the campaign include a National Food Week, to involve schools nationwide in a week of concentrated "food activity" in the summer term, the establishment of a series of pilot projects in primary schools in which children will be tracked to see how their attitudes to food change over time, and a mobile teaching kitchen visiting schools and communities.