Vegetable literacy

Can you identify these Asian vegetables? (* Answer below)

Is New Zealand becoming a nation of vegetable illiterates? Are we a people who don't know the difference between a courgette and a cucumber – let alone how to cook them or grow them? Sadly, the results of a recently released WeightWatchers survey of 1000 New Zealanders suggest that this is increasingly true.

As reported on the Stuff news website on October 10, the survey found that 80 per cent of the respondents born after 1990 (Generation Z) didn't use any fresh ingredients in their daily evening meals, while 39 per cent were unable to correctly identify common vegetables. 45 per cent of the Generation Z respondents said that young people don't know how to cook, and 20 per cent said they were too busy doing other things.

Stuff did its own data collecting on this subject, questioning young people on the street and running an on-line poll. The street interviewees mostly stumbled over correctly identifying a courgette, and only one of them cooked and ate meals using fresh vegetables regularly. By noon on 12 October 18,887 people had responded to the online poll about their cooking habits. Just under half (49.5%) said that they “cook dinner from scratch using raw ingredients most nights”, while 45% said that they cooked “but use a few pre-made sauces and products”. 2.5% said that they heated up pre-made products or ready-made dinners, while 3% said they didn't cook at all and ate out or takeaways.

Gorgeous fresh veges at the Matakana Farmers' Market

The ignorance of young Kiwis about vegetables and cooking is not surprising, given that home cooking ceased to be a part of the core curriculum for 11-14 year olds in New Zealand schools in 1987. Sadly, just as boys as well as girls were finally being offered the opportunity to become literate in kitchen skills and good nutrition, the tools were snatched from their hands. Many school kitchens were closed, and twenty five years later (quite predictably) we have a generation of vegetable and kitchen illiterates. Also a generation which is a lot fatter and heavier than the preceding generation, and starting to suffer from a previously very rare disease, Type 2 diabetes.

So I'm not inclined to laugh at the young people on the Stuff video who think that a courgette is a gherkin or a cucumber. Such ignorance is not bliss, and it could be deadly. As I argue in the 'Healthy policy prescriptions' section of my book Food@Home, it is vital that vegetable literacy becomes part of the national curriculum again, with children growing food gardens and cooking what they grow. It's not only way healthier than living on takeaways – it's way more tasty and enjoyable as well. 

* Answer: Taro stalks, sze gwa and 'fish smell plant'. Find out more about them on p. 126 of Food@Home.

Autumn vegetable harvest display at the Auckland Botanic Gardens