Hosted by SALL , contributed by Dimitris Gastouni on 31 May 2024
Background
A lot of pupils in our school community tend to prefer unhealthy food, such as junk food as part of their everyday diet either at home or at school. Adolescents tend to ignore the importance of nutritional elements, such as olive oil in their everyday eating routine. As a result, many of them tend to gain a lot of weight and not be in a good physical condition, taken into account their young age. As a school community, we thought that a project about the importance of olive oil, one of the fundamental elements of our diet could have a large impact on their everyday eating habits. This project could be implemented during Skills Lab.
Aim
- To address the importance of olive oil in our everyday diet
- To encourage students in order to follow healthy eating habits.
- To explain how olive oil is produced. (the procedure)
- To help students avoid health problems. (with obesity or physical condition)
Co-creation with societal actors
Apart from the school community which contributed to a large scale in our project, a nutritionist also had a imprtant contribution to our project with the provided aid to students who would like to change their eating habits with the help of olive oil. A contribution that was of importance was that of a local oil mill/press, where the students could visit and understand the process of producing olive oil from the olive nut. Our collaboration with the nutritionist and the oil mill had a duration of 3 months.
Implementation
We identified the problem among other worries that adolescents have at this age by the increasing number of students that face problems with their physical condition or health problems due to their unhealthy eating habits. We came up with the idea of an interactive project about the olive oil, one of the most fundamental elements of the Greek diet. The olive oil is produced in Greece and it is of top quality, one of the most nutritional ingredients that can be used in cooking. The first step was to get in contact with a nutritionist in order to help the students get informed about the nutritional value of olive oil in our life. The second step was to contact a local olive mill in order to arrange a visit to the place of olive oil processing. After the preparation of the project, the implementation followed. The first activity was to watch a video about the mediterranean diet. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9JXYiFSgzc) We made some questions based on the video that they watched. The next activity concerned the presentation of a nutritionist, that explained the nutritional benefits of the olive oil and the importance in our everyday life. The students made the food pyramid and understood the importance of the nutritional elements. The next activity was to visit the olive mill and to see the whole process of producing olive oil. This was the most interesting part of the project as it was very experiential. Back in the classroom, we made a map of Greece and tagged the places where the olive oil is produced. As a last part of the project, an evaluation questionnaire was distributed to all the students. The feedback was very positive. An evaluation questionnaire was also completed by the responsible teachers of the project.
Reflection
The results of the living lab project were that :
The students understood the importance of a balanced diet with the use of olive oil.
A lot of students dealt with their problems with their unhealthy eating habits.
They understood the process of producing olive oil.
The school canteen introduced healthy snacks based on olive oil.
The feedback from the participants was positive, as they were more capable of understanding the importance of healthy eating habits. The project worked really well without any major problems.
Futurel Plans
We aim to repeat this project in the next year to a more vast range of students (12-18) in order to include a larger number of students that could benefit from this project. Based on this fruitful experience, we could develop it a bit further to include other nutritional elements in our project, such as biological products.