Joe McNamee: How our children can help us fix Ireland's food system
Green fingers are thriving at Creagh National School, Ballinasloe — the newly announced 2025 national winner of the SuperValu Let’s GROW initiative. Photo: Andrew Downes, xposure
Having raised one child into adulthood and not broken him entirely, I returned nearly two decades later for another crack, adding two more (18 and 15, respectively) to my portfolio.
Naturally, there were differences second time around but one commonality remained: I am one of those parents who frets deeply at any slacking on the eating front, especially if they fail to finish or, worse, even start, good home-cooked meals.
Then there is junk food, the ultra-processed foods all three embraced around the mid-teen mark as they began pushing back against parental restrictions, real or imagined.
I began as fresh food fascist but gradually learned such rigidity could be counterproductive.
Now the second crop of progeny are well into their teens, I generally bite my tongue, allowing them more autonomy of choice.
After all, while they relish apparent capitulation from the “management” on toxic muck, they also chow down on a sufficiency of the good, home-cooked stuff to reassure me they won’t perish overnight.
More importantly, they regularly cook decent fare for themselves, more than halfway to my ultimate goal of teaching them to shop for good produce and then turn it into delicious, nutritious meals. Sadly, these are dying skills.
The work of the Cork Food Policy Council (including its food map of Cork) illustrates it is most pronounced in deprived areas where an always greater concentration of fast food outlets are often the primary source for daily meals, and there is restricted access to fresh produce.
Entire generations of families grow up unable to cook nutritious meals from fresh produce, instead relying on ultra-processed foods, of which we are now Europe’s third largest consumer, amounting to almost half the national shopping basket — and not just in deprived areas.
These are all consequences of a broken food system but the financial and political power of vested interests benefiting most from this dysfunction is so great, you’d be forgiven for believing the war already lost.
To date, the State has been near toothless but a modest pre-budget proposal from GIY Ireland could effect profound change.
GIY was founded in 2008 to promote growing your own food and it is deeply rewarding, physically, mentally, and emotionally, to eat your own homegrown produce.
But GIY is about so much more than furnishing moments of epicurean ecstasy. Recognising that the global system desperately needs to be fixed, it began to focus on food education and food literacy, especially for children.
GIY’s Grow at School programme — establishing school gardens, providing resources and linking garden activities to the curriculum — is a quite brilliant initiative, now flourishing in 700 Irish primary schools, reaching 100,000 children.
I believe it is the single most powerful tool deployed in recent years to tackle our broken food system.
We learned, back in the early part of this century when first introducing a national recycling programme, that primarily targeting young schoolchildren helped win the nation over as a whole.
As well as improving children’s current eating habits, Grow at School has the potential to effect massive positive change on future thinking around food when those food literate children grow up to be adults.
To date, Grow at School has been largely funded by philanthropic donors but GIY is now asking the Government to bring food gardens to all 3,300 Irish primary schools to trigger generational change at a cost of less than €10 per child.
I can think of few finer examples of speculating now to accumulate in the future, especially when it is the future of our children.
And if you care about the future of your children, of all children, then surely it won’t be too much trouble to get on to your local TD and key ministers (education; agriculture, food and marine; health; finance and public expenditure) to urge them to put all their weight behind this life-changing proposal.
Fingers crossed that the very excellent BAR 1661, in Dublin, prevails on July 24 in New Orleans as one of four finalists in the prestigious global Spirited Awards 2025, having already been included as one of the Spirited Awards Top 10 Best International Bar Teams in Europe.
And if you want to see what all the fuss is about, check out their new summer spritz menu, five fab new cocktails that are perfect for a spot of sublime summer sippin’ on BAR 1661’s outdoor terrace.
The Pumphouse is a new family-run and family-friendly bar and restaurant, in the historical village of Dunlavin, Co Wicklow, but what marks it out for special attention is that the crowd-pleasing menu is a celebration of hyper-local seasonal ingredients from head chef Gavin McDonagh.
Alaria is a new restaurant in Schull, in West Cork, that sees chef Ciaran Tedford, formerly of Killarney Park Hotel, assuming the reins in the kitchen to serve up fine seafood fare, locally sourced whenever possible.
- Instagram: @AlariaWestCork
As it may have been frustrating for some readers to have me write of tantalising tubers and other fine veg that turned out to be so hyper-local as to be near inaccessible for most readers, I’m redressing with details of Galway-based Green Earth Organics’ nationwide box delivery scheme, a mix of homegrown and judicious imports (including exotic fruits).
I found a recent Summer Specials box to be smashing value (€50, incl delivery), comprising carrots, cauliflower, courgette, onions, lettuce, salad mix, tomatoes, Butler’s Eggs, par-baked Carrig Rua sourdough bread, veggie burritos, Mossfield cheese and fresh tagliatelle.
