Sixty primary schools take part in Chef in the Classroom 2022

The chefs all participate as volunteers. In these lessons, children learn a lot about taste and food. They also work on skills such as arithmetic (estimating quantities and fractions) and planning. Project leader Marlies Willemsen-Regelink (WUR): "Cooking brings everything together. You taste things, learn how to grate a carrot or a radish, and how to use them to make something delicious. While the children are cooking, they also become curious about how a radish grows."

TV chef Sandra Ysbrandy

TV chef Sandra Ysbrandy kicked off the ‘Chef in the Classroom 2022’ week with a cooking class for Year 6 at PCBO Gaspard de Coligny in Baarn.

Chefs across the country visit schools to teach pupils about taste, cooking and the profession of chef. A total of 1,600 pupils from Years 4, 5 and 6 are taking part.

Especially for Chef in the Classroom, TV chef Sandra Ysbrandy created a recipe: the rainbow wrap. A wholemeal wrap filled with vegetables, fruit and yoghurt dressing. The vegetables used are grown in the Netherlands and harvested in spring. The vegetables (including radish, white cabbage and carrot) combine to form the colours of the rainbow.

Vegetable consumption

In the Netherlands, six percent of children eat the recommended daily amount (RDA) of vegetables, and twelve percent eat the recommended daily amount of fruit. Each type of fruit and vegetable contains valuable nutrients. It is therefore especially important that children learn to taste and eat different types of vegetables and fruit. Eating more plant-based food also contributes to a more sustainable diet.

Materials – Chef in the Classroom live and online

Chef in the Classroom is part of the Smaaklessen educational programme. Smaaklessen is an effective educational programme about food and taste for primary school children. Smaaklessen stimulates children’s curiosity about and interest in healthy and sustainable food. Experiencing food is central to the lessons. Knowing where food comes from helps children make conscious, healthy choices. Various studies have shown that nutrition education is more effective when experiential teaching methods and activities are used.

The Chef in the Classroom event was made possible through the national Learning to Eat Well Young programme and the Food Education Platform. The Food Education Platform is a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in which the government, business community, academia, education sector and civil society organisations work together on objective nutrition education for children. Wageningen University & Research’s Smaaklessen Support Centre is responsible for coordinating the Food Education Platform.