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Cooking with your kids and engaging them in hands-on activities are two ways to begin to educate children about the healthy eating, and kick start the important task to help change how the younger generation looks at food and nutrition.

First, kids should be involved in the production of their own food. They have to get their hands in the dirt, they have to grow things. They also have to become sensually stimulated, and the way to begin is with a bakery.

Getting kids into the kitchen preparing the food they and their families will eat results in them viewing food in an entirely new way. If given the right ingredients, that act alone can raise the standards of the quality of the food both they and their family eat.

However, as a parent, as a grandparent, as a former educator, I know that these practices alone when we are dealing with young children are insufficient. We will never control this rising epidemic without greater accountability from the food industry.

Kids see cooking as a creative outlet now, like soccer and ballet. It gives me hope that things like fast food, childhood obesity and the horrible state of school lunches can be addressed by kids and their parents.

I cannot stress a greater importance than to teach the young generation about the risks of unhealthy eating. A great way to pique their interest in nutrition is to involve them more in the cooking process. They not only will learn to cook for themselves, but also develop a lifetime of healthy habits.

All schools should teach children basic cooking skills. Every school should be able to buy sustainable, good quality food wherever possible from local sources. Every school should include food-growing in the curriculum. For some, that will mean twinning with willing farms. For others, it will mean literally building their own small farms.

The Food Network and the Cooking Channel have so many viewers. And, because there's no violence, some of that audience is children. So, I think we have a responsibility to educate parents how to produce healthy meals for their families.

It should be that every child, when they leave school, can do ten meals, because when they leave home, they've got to be able to eat healthily. Blow the science of it and everything else. They've just got to be able to know what's good for them, how to buy it, and how to make a few dishes that they enjoy and don't cost too much.

Most of my education has been around food.