Cypriot children join European Healthy Food Day

By Athena Karsera

Pupils at public elementary schools yesterday learned all about healthy eating as part of the European Day of Healthy Food and Cooking.

The Cyprus Weekly spent part of the Day at Peristerona Elementary School in the Nicosia region, selected as the project’s flagship school.

Also visiting the school were Cypriot European Commission official George Stylianou, the Eurotoques President in Cyprus Panayiotis Hadjisymeou and officials from the Education Ministry. Eurotoques is the European Association of Chefs.

Following a short assembly, pupils at the school had the chance to create healthy food under the supervision of Hadjisymeou and other professional chefs.

Speaking at the assembly, the school’s Headmistress Leoni Argyrou welcomed the guests and said that aim was to encourage children to adopt healthy eating habits early on to ensure better health as adults.

Also addressing the pupils, Hadjisymeou said that pupils would learn about three types of dishes – cooked food namely vegetable souvlaki and vegetable millefeuille with rice, healthy meatless sandwiches with olive oil instead of butter and yoghurt with home-made flavourings including nuts, honey or carob syrup.

The master chef also said that pupils would learn that they could make even a simple dish like pulses more interesting.

Good habits

Pupils then gave a small presentation on what their school had already done to encourage healthy eating including, in 2004, carrying out an award-winning study on the village’s eating habits.

He outlined how the recipes were created and gave pupils easy tips on how to make meals even healthier, such as replacing butter and margarine with olive oil and not cooking food too close to the flame and coals when barbequing.

Later speaking to The Cyprus Weekly, Hadjisymeou said: "Our goal today is to teach children about healthier ways of eating. The EU has a serious obesity problem and people are more likely to continue healthy eating habits if they learn them at a young age. We have to show them that healthy eating is the only way to go and we hope that they will also be telling their parents to feed them healthier food."

The chef said that elementary school age was ideal to ingrain healthy habits in young minds as older children may already have formed bad habits they would find harder to break.

"Many people, including children, believe that fast food is easiest but we want to show the pupils here today that it can be quick and easy to prepare healthy food at home on your own."

Also speaking to The Cyprus Weekly, Stylianou said that the EU placed great importance on combating obesity. He produced shocking statistics on the ever-increasing number of overweight and obese children in Europe, with figures going up all the time.

Delicious

Two years ago, Stylianou said, 14 million children in Europe were considered to be overweight and obese. Today, the number stands at 22 million.

"Exercise is also an important part of keeping your weight down and staying healthy," he said: "I will also be talking to the children about that when I go into their classrooms but the focus today is on developing good eating habits."

The teacher who coordinated the event at the Peristerona school, Nefi Kameri, said that educators placed great emphasis on helping children improve their health and that she would welcome further events.

Other officials attending the day remarked that Cypriots should be the first to adopt healthy eating habits as the best way of eating originated from this part of the world.

Pupils were thrilled to be taking part in the event. One told The Cyprus Weekly: "I usually like to eat pizza or hamburgers but I have been learning that it is not so difficult to prepare something delicious at home."