Food Literacy – a New Horizontal Theme in Adult Education and Counselling

WIN experts have elaborated the evaluation of the project Food Literacy.

In families and in society in general, there is less and less dissemination and transfer of knowledge about food preparation and nutrition. As a consequence, a “culinary illiteracy” threatens to arise. A decreasing number of people know about the origin and quality aspects of food and know how to cook, and at the same time, health risks and the economical costs of unhealthy food habits increase. Also, the eating habits change due to new social developments. Traditional food preparation disappears. Food scandals, overproduction of food, and contradictory diet suggestions contribute to a growing uneasiness of consumers.

The new requirements for educational and consulting offers  met by www.muendig.at, the new service organisation for communication and education for culinary culture, ecology, agriculture, sustainability and the related social and cultural themes.

The main objective of the project is to establish “food literacy” as a horizontal theme in adult education and to consider it as a personal core competence, such as “computer literacy” or “consumer literacy”. The objectives are in detail:

  • to raise the awareness of multipliers in adult education to issues concerning food literacy
  • to develop materials that enable these multipliers to incorporate aspects of nutrition competence and culinary culture in their courses
  • to raise the awareness of institutions working with clients from socially and/or economically disadvantaged target groups who cannot be reached with conventional adult education offers
  • to show how food or nutrition campaigns will have to be complemented with target group specific educational offers in order to lead to sustainable results

GRUNDTVIG Project
Project Duration: October 2004 until September 2007
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