“Don’t play with your food.”
It’s a phrase we all remember from our own childhoods, bringing back memories of building mashed potato mountains to hide the cabbage we didn’t want to eat.
But as the recession bites and food bank use booms, the phrase has recently taken on new significance, as we all learn that food is a more precious resource than ever.
In fact, some educators have even taken to social media to question whether we should be using food items as learning resources: pasta twists as counters or lentils for artwork might tease or offend hungry learners, they suggest.
Amid the moral questioning, though, some argue that children in the early years and even beyond should be playing with food more, rather than less.
Baby food company Ella’s Kitchen, backed by the Early Years Alliance, has launched a campaign to promote “sensory food play” in the early years foundation stage (EYFS), saying it will encourage children to eat a wider range of fruit and vegetables and help tackle obesity and malnutrition. They are even calling for ring-fenced funding for it in EYFS settings in less affluent areas.
But what exactly is sensory food play, and is there any evidence that it brings benefits in the classroom?
“The concept is based on experiential learning and it encompasses a broad range of sensory exposure, but it’s non-taste,” says Dr Helen Coulthard, a developmental psychologist who researches the development of eating behaviour at De Montfort University. “[It’s about] touching, smelling, being exposed to the sensory characteristics of food.”
She explains that sensory food play can involve activities as simple as touching and sniffing a fruit or vegetable, to making sounds with it, cutting it up and making images with it, grating it, and creating different textures and shapes.
From the age of 2, children can be engaged in “creative or fun games”, such as making faces out of food, she says, while older children can be engaged in cooking “role play” games.
Games of bingo can help with fruit and vegetable identification and children can even be encouraged to explore new fruits and vegetables by cutting them up and decorating their hands and faces with them.
In one intervention, she adds, children took part in the ancient art of Japanese fish printing - literally printing pictures using whole fish.
“Most children like the familiar, so if you overcome that reluctance to engage with something new, then that really helps and establishes a positive connection to healthy foods,” says Dr Coulthard.
This form of experiential learning, she continues, contrasts with the way in which many schools in the UK have historically taught about food, which, she says, has often been “too nutrition education based”.
Rather than just explicitly teaching young children about whether foods are “healthy”, she advocates for a “pleasure-based” approach that promotes the joys of eating fruit and vegetables.
“I think if we could add more of this experiential and hands-on learning to the education provision, that’s the sweet spot,” she says. “[Just] learning where a potato comes from doesn’t really make you want to eat it more.”
It’s a nice idea, but is there evidence to back up such an approach?
“There is quite a lot of evidence out there now that this does work,” Dr Coulthard says.
For example, a 2018 review of the evidence around sensory food play found that “interacting with the sensory properties of food during tactile play may particularly benefit children who are food neophobic, going through a period of fussy eating or who are simply unwilling to taste new or disliked foods.”
Another small experimental study of 62 three- and four-year-olds concluded that children involved in sensory food play using fruit and vegetables - without pressure to taste the foods -“tried significantly more fruits and vegetables post activity” than children who watched a researcher playing with food or who engaged in non-food play. This was true even after controlling for child food neophobia and whether they already liked the foods.
Children in the sensory play conditions were also more likely to try unfamiliar fruit and vegetables that they had not interacted with during the play sessions.
Another study of much older children taking part in a sensory-based course exposing them to fish, found that 47 per cent had become curious about tasting other kinds of fish and 38 per cent stated a higher liking for fish after participation.
So, if the ultimate goal of your teaching is to encourage more children to be open to trying new foods, there is evidence that sensory food play can help.
Early years teacher and Tes columnist, Helen Pinnington, agrees that sensory food play is beneficial, and says there are a number of ways that food can be used in the early years classroom.
“I would look to use real foods and use foods as a resource through all aspects of play. It might be for drawing, cutting up a pumpkin, describing an exotic fruit, making a playdough with added spices or vanilla essence,” she says.
“It is a great stimulus. I notice so much more talk when the children have something real in front of them. If you cut open a watermelon, it’s juicy, you’re talking about all of that language, it is so much more meaningful.
Pinnington recently impressed her pupils with the famous Mentos and Coke experiment, combining these two ingredients and watching the resulting chemical reaction.
“There was that awe and wonder. There was really great engagement,” she says.
However, not everyone is on board with the idea of sensory food play.
Emma Davis, an lecturer and writer specialising in early years education, recently started a debate on Twitter about the appropriateness of using food items as resources. She says that, after the pandemic, family budgets tightened and she changed her perspective on using food as a play and learning resource.
“During this period, I reflected on the use of food as part of the provision and it didn’t sit well with me. I questioned how families would feel when they saw their child playing with pasta or rice or using real vegetables in the mud kitchen.
“Even the excuse of ‘a pack of spaghetti doesn’t cost much’ is not a good enough excuse anymore. Some families can’t even afford a pack of spaghetti to eat, let alone for using as a play resource.”
She says teachers need to be “aware of the current climate and the impact this is having on the families we are working with”.
“How might they feel walking into your setting and seeing spaghetti set up for cutting practice, pasta for posting activities and cereals used in farm small-world setups? It’s time to change our practice to reflect the growing needs of our communities, showing empathy and compassion.”
That isn’t to say that food has no place in the early years classroom, she stresses. Activities that end with children eating the food, or taking home something they have cooked are more positive - and there is also scope to use sensory food play to help children who have difficulties with feeding for “medical, physical or emotional reasons”.
“However, in this way, food is used to promote specific development rather than as part of continuous provision in a setting,” Davis says.
But both Pinnington and Dr Coulthard disagree that the current economic climate is a reason to avoid using food even in continuous provision.
Sensory food play could ultimately lead to less food waste given that children are more likely to eat their food if they are familiar with it and enjoy it, Dr Coulthard suggests.
Activities involving fruit and vegetables can be implemented “sensitively” with minimum cost and waste, she says, while dry foods, such as pasta or beans can be used again and again.
“I think there are other areas of food waste that are probably more important - things like sell-by dates and people not putting too much food on children’s plates,” she says.
Pinnington, meanwhile, says it doesn’t even cross her mind that using real foods for play might be offensive to some families. Her school asks for a £5 annual voluntary contribution from parents to fund basics, such as playdough ingredients.
“We have real tins in the role-play area, we’re using real pots and pans. Often parents will give me a bag of pasta that’s gone out of date, so it would have been thrown away anyway.”
Her school supports struggling families in other ways, she says, and children who come to school without breakfast and are struggling to concentrate or behave are offered snacks where necessary.
“With a lot of the food that we use, it’s not something they want to eat, it’s not tempting them in that way,” she adds. “If they are hungry, we will notice and they will be fed in the right kind of way.”
Irena Barker is a freelance journalist
