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. 🌱
#sensoryfoodeducation
Rosie White, an early years teacher at one of our ambassador schools, Prendergast Primary, explains the power of TastEd to transform how children eat. After a lesson exploring tomatoes, children piled them onto their plates!
Some schools and nurseries line up their TastEd lessons with school lunches as part of a joined up whole school approach. The result? Children are far more willing to try and enjoy options from the salad bar!
This is why when we talk about changing school food standards and school meals, we need to be talking about taste education (also known as sensory food education). A child will only get the benefits of a healthy school lunch if they actually want to eat it.
@r_osie@prendergastpri1
#sensoryfoodeducation #foodeducation #primaryschool #tasted #schoolmeals
Did you know asparagus is traditionally harvested from St George’s Day (today - 23rd April) through to the Summer Solstice?
This window has shifted with our changing climate, but growers still stick to a short harvesting season to make sure those vibrant green spears return year after year.
Patience is key: nothing is harvested for the first two years. But after that, growers are rewarded with a crop each season. Once harvesting ends, the plant transforms, growing tall, bushy and feathery before dying back over winter, ready to begin again.
Have you tried asparagus? How do you like yours cooked?
You can find out more vegetable facts, school food news and TastEd updates in our newsletter. Click the link in our bio to sign up 🧡
Swipe to see how it grows 🌱
#foodeducation #exploringasparagus #seasonaleating
School food standards are changing. For the first time in 13 years, the government is updating regulations to bring more fresh vegetables, fruit, and whole grains onto children’s plates.
But putting vegetables on the plate is only half the story. How do we help children actually want to eat them? That’s where sensory food education comes in. By giving children the chance to explore vegetables with all their senses outside the pressure of mealtimes, we help them build familiarity, confidence, and develop a taste for vegetables.
We’re currently piloting this approach with Essex County Council. As early years foundation stage nutrition guidance was updated, TastEd is supporting settings to help children develop tastes that match the food they’re being served. Lasting change doesn’t come from rules alone, it comes from changing how children experience food. Because the foods we eat are the foods we love. 🧡
Pics: swipe to see changes to school meals over the decades from the school food exhibition @foodmuseumuk
#schooldinners #foodeducation #tasteeducation
We are so excited to be working with TastEd to introduce sensory food education to early years settings across Essex.🍏
At the NOF conference, TastEd held two engaging workshops, explained their mission and invited early years settings to join the new pilot.🍍
As part of the new pilot, TastEd will be providing sensory food education training and support an audience of over 130 Essex early years settings and local higher education early years students! They are working to develop new, inclusive resources to support with sensory food education in the early years.🌟
✉If you'd like to find out more about the work, please do get in touch with us via our website (link in bio).
#NOFEssex #NourishingOurFuture #TastEd #SensoryFoodEducation #EarlyYears #HealthyEating
Join the TastEd team 🥕
If food education is your passion, this is an exciting opportunity to make a real impact. You’ll train and inspire teachers, work directly in schools, and play a key role in shaping what sensory food education looks like across the UK.
Food Education Officer | Deadline for applications: 29th April
Full details via the link in our bio 🧡
#foodeducation #opportunities #primaryschool #earlyyears
Now we’re back from Easter, 500 new breakfast clubs have launched as part of the @educationgovuk national roll out.
These breakfasts will be healthy, nutritious and varied. Our friends @magicbreakfast_uk have proven how breakfast clubs can boost children’s attendance, behaviour and learning.
But they also offer a huge opportunity to broaden our children’s tastes and rethink what breakfast can be. Check out our latest blog, written by Anna Shepard, to find out about breakfast in all its forms!
Link in bio 🧡
#vegetables #breakfast #foodaroundtheworld
Let’s rethink breakfast.
What does breakfast look like in your home? A slice of toast? A bowl of cereal? Maybe porridge or even a fry-up. Whatever it is, it’s likely a meal you wouldn’t eat at any other time of day.
But why?
Around the world, breakfast looks very different - it might be yesterday’s leftovers, dahl and paratha, chilaquiles or fish and rice.
In our latest blog, Anna Shepard explores how British breakfasts became so dominated by ultra-processed cereals and why the morning meal can be the perfect time to introduce children to new flavours - including vegetables.
/rethinking-breakfast/ 🧡
#vegetables #breakfast
🥕Exciting Opportunity Alert!🥕
We’re looking for an enthusiastic Food Education Officer to join the TastEd team. In this role you’ll deliver engaging training, support educators, and bring sensory food education into classrooms across the country.
Deadline: 29th April 2026
For more details, please see the link in our bio 🧡
Join us in our mission to transform how children experience food, building curiosity, confidence and a lifelong love of vegetables.
#sensoryfoodeducation #EYFS #primaryschool #foodeducation
Over the year we have had several episodes focussing on how to explore foods in a low pressure way in your own home and with your own kids. But in today's episode we explore what happens when we take that work into a group setting. So I was very happy to speak to Jason O’Rourke who is a primary headteacher and a founder of a charity called TastEd that gets food education into schools with that same low pressure exploration approach.
TastEd uses the Sapere method which helps children to use all of their senses to build familiarity with a food – Sapere literally means “to know” so it’s just about getting to know a wide range of foods, in TastEd they focus primarily on fruits and vegetables. TastEd has two main rules, no one has to like the foods and no one has to try them. It is all about exploration, confidence and trust. You can find out more about their work over at @tasted_feed . This episode discusses why a group setting like a school can be really helpful for children to build their confidence with food.
Dr Jason O’Rourke is a nationally recognised expert in food education, school food policy, and children’s health and wellbeing. He advises universities, government bodies and NGOs, serving on the UK Government’s School Food Standards Advisory Board, as a Project Partner on The School Meals Service: Past, Present and Future, and as the UK representative on the European SAPERE Board. He is a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on School Food, a Food for Life Ambassador, and co founder of TastEd. As headteacher of @washingboroughacademy , Jason has led nationally acclaimed work placing food education at the heart of school life.
To listen to this very thoughtful and inspiring episode go to the link in my bio and click on the image for this post for the episode page to listen or find all of TastEd and Jason's food consultancy links.
Music Happy Days by Simon Folwar via Uppbeat
#focusonfamiliarity #schoolfood #foodeducation #foodforkidspod #foodforkids
This past weekend the TastEd team attended the @nourishingourfuture conference 🌱 This inspiring event celebrated the impact that has been achieved developing healthier food environments for children.
One practitioner shared a lovely TastEd story: children were guessing what was inside a feely bag. One child said it felt like slime and proudly declared: “I love slime!”
In fact it was a passion fruit - and when the parents heard about it later, they were thrilled and even bought passion fruit for their child to try again at home.
A small moment that shows how curiosity and sensory play can help children discover new foods.
Thank you to everyone who organised, spoke and shared their stories 🧡
Photography by: Ranch
#earlyyears #foodeducation #sensoryplay #TastEd #sensoryfoodeducation #nof #nourishingourfuture @essex_cc
Gainsborough Primary School in Hackney Wick had a TastEd day!
Children in every year group had the opportunity to look, touch, smell, hear and taste something new, building confidence, familiarity, and a love for vegetables. By exploring food through all five senses, pupils developed curiosity and courage to try new flavours, discovering that vegetables can be exciting and delicious.
This inspiring day was made possible thanks to generous funding from All Saints Educational Trust. Their support means we’re able to offer @gainsborough_hackney a supported TastEd package from teacher training, to sourcing and funding fresh vegetables, to helping the school embed TastEd into the curriculum for the long term.
It's easier to eat vegetables when you love them. Taste education means healthier, happier children. 🌱
#sensoryfoodeducation #vegetables #tasted
