by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
A poll of 2,000 people for the charity Leaf (Linking Environment and Farming) found that more than a third of 16 to 23-year-olds, in fact 36% of them, do not know bacon comes from pigs and four in 10 failed to link milk with an image of a dairy cow, with 7% linking it to wheat.
Some 41% correctly linked butter to a dairy cow, with 8% linking it to beef cattle, while 67% were able to link eggs to an image of a hen some 11% thought they came from wheat or maize.
A total of 6% of those questioned knew that salad dressing could come from rapeseed oil, compared with the national average among all age groups of 24%.
Although four in 10 young adults (43%) considered themselves knowledgeable about where their food comes from, the results revealed a "shocking" lack of knowledge about how the most basic food is produced, the charity said.
We often hear reports that our food knowledge may be declining but this new research shows how bad the situation is becoming and despite what they think, young adults are clearly becoming removed from where their food comes from.
It is estimated that 3 in 10 adults born in the 1990s haven't visited a farm in more than 10 years, if at all. It has to be said that this is a real shame as our farmers not only play an important role in food production but are passionate about engaging and reconnecting consumers too.
However, one also has to consider the fact here that schools are basically afraid to take children on farm visits for fear of litigation and health and safety concerns. Topping that is also the fact that it could upset children, so it has been phrased once, to realize that the burgers they consume actually come from cuddly animals.
The charity, which has been organizing an Open Farm Sunday event on the weekend of April 27 and 28, also found almost two-thirds of young adults (64%) did not know that new potatoes would be available from British farms in June, and one in 10 (10%) thought they took less than a month to grow.
OnePoll surveyed 2,000 British adults online between May 11 and 14 on behalf of LEAF.
Surprising this should not be as a study found some ten years or so ago already that children were miles removed from Nature and reality in the UK with many of them thinking that milk came from a factory and had nothing to do with cows and burgers the same.
When asked what a gamekeeper did a great many, at that time, replied that he looked after the Pokemon.
It is high time that children would be reintroduced to reality and not only learned where their food comes from but actually also learned how to grow their own food, and that from a very young age.
That, however, could be a problem with health and safety rules such as we can see when it comes to gardening tools aimed at primary school children where it has to be stated on the tools that they must not be used by children under the age of 10 or 11. Or when, as recently, teachers are suspended and punished for just even showing garden tools to children as they are classed by school authorities as – wait for it – weapons. And we still wonder why our children have become so removed from Nature and reality.
We also do not allow them to “play” in the outdoors all too often now for fear that they could be interfered with or they could hurt themselves and thus removing them from any contact with the natural world and also causing them to become obese.
We have created this generation and we are creating another generation that is possibly even further removed from Nature and from reality if we are not going to put in the reverse gear and that now.
© 2013
