TastEd

Teachers are sharing their feedback after a successful year delivering TastEd! 🥕🍎

Sensory exploration and repeated opportunities to experience a variety of foods can help children build familiarity, confidence and a greater willingness to try new foods.

We’re delighted to hear how TastEd is supporting learners to develop positive experiences with food.

This term, we've been taking TastEd into schools and nurseries in a more hands-on way 🍎

Alongside teacher training, we've been demonstrating lessons in the classroom and working alongside staff to help embed TastEd into everyday practice. Our free online resources are available for every primary school and nursery, but we've seen that the biggest impact comes when staff feel confident to deliver TastEd regularly themselves. By supporting teachers in the classroom, we're helping show just how simple, joyful and powerful sensory food education can be.

This work is part of Essex County Council Nourishing Our Future project, delivered in partnership with Anglia Ruskin University.

When children are given regular, positive opportunities to explore fruit and vegetables using all their senses, it can help change their relationship with food for life. 💚

Meet Dr Tim Gilson, our new Chair of Trustees 👋

Tim brings a brilliant mix of education, leadership and charity experience, and a love of growing, cooking and eating good food.

As a former school leader, he has experienced firsthand how transformative food education can be for children. And his work for community farms and care farms has shown him how much a child’s mental health can be boosted after a day spent in nature.

In TastEd lessons, teachers bring nature into the classroom (or the nursery) in the form of fresh vegetables and fruits and we feel very lucky to have Tim bringing his expertise and leadership to our project.

We’re excited to welcome him to TastEd as we continue helping children discover the joy of discovering new tastes through sensory food education 🍅🥕🍏

Tim’s favourite way to eat a carrot? Steamed with chopped parsley, alongside a roast dinner.

Welcome to TastEd, Tim! 💚

BROAD BEANS are one of the summer vegetables children seem to find most exciting to explore in a TastEd lesson, to touch as much as to eat. Maybe it's something about those pillowy fuzzy insides when you open up the pod. As lots of primary age children will know from the song 'Cauliflowers Fluffy' (a favourite for Harvest Festival), the broad beans 'are sleeping in their blankety bed'.

Did you know? The flowering of broad beans marks the traditional end of the hungry gap – a period when, in our climate, less fresh vegetables are locally available. Winter crops bolt, while summer crops aren’t quite yet ready. But those flowers mean summer's harvest is here!

When dried, a broad bean changes its name – to a fava bean! The UK is one of the world’s largest exporters of fava beans, with many going to Egypt and the Middle East. Maybe it’s time for more of us learn to love this delicious legume, which can be eaten raw from the pod or cooked into many delicious dishes!

Share your favourites below ⬇

Smooth. Bumpy. Purple. Strange. Delicious? 🍆🫐

At Blossom Barn Stansted, we have recently partnered with TastEd - a brilliant taste education scheme - and this is just one example of the incredible sensory food experiences it brings to our children.

From aubergines to purple grapes, our little ones have been touching, smelling, listening and even tasting fruits and vegetables they may never have explored before. And the conversations that came from it? Absolutely brilliant.

This supports:

🍎 Health and Self-Care - positive relationships with food and healthy eating
👋 Sensory development - touch, smell, taste, sound and sight
💬 Communication and Language - new vocabulary for texture, taste and colour
🌍 Understanding the World - where food comes from and how it grows
🔢 Early maths - smooth vs bumpy, big vs small, comparing and sorting

✨ Some teacher feedback on TastEd! ✨

“I work with extremely vulnerable children and seeing the spark in their eyes as they use their different senses is wonderful. The lesson plans are great and offer so many options. TastEd is truly wonderful and I am glad it is part of my professional life.”

We are always inspired to hear first-hand experiences from teachers of TastEd making a real difference to children's lives.

Knowing that our lesson plans (created by food writer Bee Wilson) are making such a difference to children's lives makes us wish that every child in every school could benefit from TastEd.

If you are a UK primary school teacher or nursery practitioner, do head to our website for details on how to sign up to access our full set of resources for FREE.

https://www.tasteeducation.com/sign-up/

Are you a food and textiles teacher? We are excited to share this professional development opportunity for food and textiles teachers 📚

All Saints Educational Trust are offering individual awards for trainee and practicing food and textiles teachers to support teaching qualifications or their professional development.

Applications are open now until September 1.

For further information and to apply, go to: https://aset.org.uk/individual-awards/

What is sensory food education? 👀✋👃👂👅
Sensory food education is a hands-on approach, helping children explore food using all five senses: touch, look, smell, sound and taste.

By creating positive, playful experiences with food, children build confidence, curiosity and language skills while developing a healthier relationship with what they eat.

As children become more familiar with vegetables, they discover new preferences. Through exploration and fun, children learn to love fresh vegetables and fruits, along with the confidence and curiosity to try new foods in the future!

When was the last time you tried something new? 👅

Children are often confronted with new tastes, and it can take a while to become familiar and really learn to love a new food.

Taste education (sometimes called sensory food education) invites children to see, smell, touch, and really explore a vegetable or fruit before they taste it. It builds curiosity and confidence and helps create a positive relationship with what’s on their plate. A squishy blueberry, crunchy, loud celery, the smell of fresh mint… these small moments shape confident, adventurous eaters.

We are making food exploration fun, pressure-free, and full of discovery. 🌱