Saturday 23 January 2010

It don't grow on trees you know

Is it true that more than a quarter of teenagers think that bacon comes from sheep? Not only that, do a third really think that oats grow on trees and just under a fifth believe that eggs are a basic ingredient of bread (is the breakfast delicacy 'eggy bread' to blame for this I wonder)? According to an article that I read today, this would appear to be the case. We all know that you cannot always believe what you read in the papers, but in the light of today’s education, somehow the above information does tend to urge me towards believing it.

Therefore, the understatement of the week has to be:

It shows how important it is to teach the adults of tomorrow about the food they eat,’ said Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers’ Union.

‘Everyone should know where primary foods like cereals are grown and the role they play as part of a healthy balanced diet.’

Apart from the fact that they would look pretty foolish arriving at a ‘pick your own’ establishment and asking “Where are the oat trees?” or asking a sheep farmer whether he sells home-farmed “ham joints” for Christmas.

Just to confuse the issue even more, though, remember this classic April Fool that had hundreds of callers ringing in wanting to buy spaghetti bushes?

1 comment:

Richie said...

I was talking several years back to a young Army captain (British equivalent of lieutenant) who grew up in Louisville, KY. His high school biology class (10th grade) went on a field trip to a farm where the students were surprised to find that potatoes actually grew IN THE GROUND! Imagine that, we eat something pulled OUT of the ground. They were all amazed.

I sometimes think that we are so disconnected to "the farm" that we really don't appreciate the fragility of how we get our food and what a marvel farming really is.