Food For Thought, Food For Children

This lovely and inspiring book was given by my son a few years back.  This book is a series of childhood recollections about an ideal school in Tokyo during WWII that combined learning with fun, freedom and love.  In real life, the Totto-chan of the book has become one of Japan's most popular TV personalities - Tetsuko Kuroyanagi.  She attributes her success in life to this wonderful school and its headmaster.  Devoted to welfare and conservation,  Kuroyanagi is Asia's first UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and serves on the board of the Worldwide Fund for Nature.  She is the author of 10 books.

One of the interesting topics covered in this book is about food, pages 31-32 ~ Sea Food and Land Food:

''Now it was time for 'something from the ocean and something from the hills, ' the lunch hour Totto-chan had looked forward so eagerly.

The headmaster had adopted the phrase to describe a balanced meal - the kind of food he expected you to bring for lunch in addition to your rice.  Instead of the usual "Train your child to eat everything,"  and "Please see that they bring a nutritiously balanced lunch," this headmaster asked parents to include in their children's lunchboxes 'something from the ocean and something from the hills.'

''Something from the ocean'' meant sea food - things such as fish, dried bonito, seeweed and tsukuda-ni  while 'something from the hills' meant food from the land - like vegetables, eggs,  beef, pork and chicken.

Mother was impressed by this and thought that few headmasters were capable of expressing such an important rule so simply. Oddly enough, just having to choose from two categories made preparing lunch seem simpler.''

In my travel to Korea, I observed that almost all of the children lunchboxes included fruits and some vegetables. There were many other groups of kindergarten children on that day and their lunchboxes were similarly packed.   The teachers said that the children had no problems eating the fruits &  veges. Look at the following photos :