Sensory food education for children
Inspiring children to explore food with all their senses
Sensory food education for children
Inspiring children to explore food with all their senses
About Flavour School
Flavour School is about exploring food and flavour through the senses. Our programme provides fun and simple ways to help children learn about the senses, taste and flavour, in order to give them more confidence, curiosity and willingness to try new foods - a fundamental building block for developing healthy attitudes to food and eating.
We provide teaching resources, ideas, advice and support to schools and nurseries, health professionals, and food education specialists, to embed sensory food education and the Flavour School programme into classrooms and other educational settings.
More about the programme
Sensory food education and food appreciation
The Flavour School programme is a series of lessons using simple, fun and low-cost activities and experiments with healthy foods, that teach children about how the five senses - touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell - affect their eating experiences. Children build vocabulary to better understand and express their experiences, and enjoy togetherness and shared learning around food, while also respecting each individual's taste experience. Flavour School uses experiential learning to build familiarity and positive associations with vegetables and fruit, and equip children with basic knowledge and behavioural tools to enjoy exploring food and flavour on their own beyond the programme.
The method is both simple and flexible in terms of age group, lesson schedule and class size. It is designed for teachers to implement themselves, without the need for specialist equipment or advanced cooking skills. Our Reception/Key Stage 1 and Early Years/Nursery Starter Programme Teaching Manuals provide a set of lesson plans with step-by-step guidance to help you get going with sensory food education in your school or nursery, whatever your level of experience with food education.
Both manuals are available to download for free below. We'd love to hear about your experiences with the programme.
Our research on Flavour School outcomes
Research into the outcomes of the programme is a core focus of Flavour school - we want to understand how children respond to Flavour School, how usable the programme is for teachers and schools, and how we can develop and improve the programme. This information is also essential for educators and policy makers to make informed decisions on the value of teaching Flavour School in educational settings.
Working with the School of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Leeds, we conducted our study from 2019 to 2022 (factoring in some Covid-19 disruption!) in primary schools in Leeds and London, including a ‘randomised control trial’ (the clinical gold standard trial design). The project was funded by the EU Horizon2020 science programme. The findings were published in .January 2025 in the journal Appetite.
School teachers delivered the Flavour School programme to children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 over a school term. It’s really important to look at real live behaviour, in a comfortable and fun setting, so before and after this teaching, children took part in a ‘Taste Explorers’ activity. They were offered tastings of nine different veggies and fruits, some more familiar and some more unusual. They rated foods they tried, drawing emoji faces to express their likes and dislikes. We analysed video recordings to assess how much the children were participating and enjoying themselves, how many different things they chose to taste, and their confidence and curiosity in exploring foods and flavours, before and after completing the Flavour School programme.
The key finding was that the fun, exploratory context of Flavour School activities encourages openness to tasting during the activities. However, taking part did not change children’s longer-term tasting characteristics. In short, Flavour School did not ‘cure’ resistance to tasting in reluctant children – but even reluctant children were often remarkably willing to join in and have a go at tasting in the conducive context of Flavour School activities!
Therefore, we recommend Flavour School as a great way to expand all children’s food horizons and engage them in tasting new foods – but not as an intervention for ‘curing’ children of food habits and characteristics which adults deem undesirable. We will shortly be publishing our user research with the teachers who delivered Flavour School for the study, which will provide useful context for policy makers and teachers considering introducing sensory food education to primary school settings.
About our organisation
Flavour School is a registered charity in England and Wales (no. 1178048), founded in 2016, with the mission to promote sensory food education as a way to help children develop healthier, happier relationships with food and eating.
We believe that all children should benefit from sensory food education - learning about the senses, taste and flavour, to develop more confidence and curiosity to try new foods.
We created the Flavour School programme to make it easy for schools and nurseries to introduce sensory food education, enabling more children to enjoy exploring food with all their senses and to express their food experiences and preferences with confidence.
Friends and supporters
Ark Franklin
We are very grateful to ARK Franklin Primary Academy in London for making a generous donation from the proceeds of its wonderful 2018 Fork to Fork Festival to support the development of Flavour School.
Ella's Kitchen
We partnered with Ella’s Kitchen to research and promote sensory food education in the UK. Alongside supporting our research, Ella’s donated proceeds from sales of their 'Eat Along Book’ to support Flavour School to train teachers and get kids exploring food and flavour with all their senses. The book helps little ones explore a variety of foods at mealtimes through sensory play during their weaning adventure.
Contact us
If you would like more information about sensory food education, the Flavour School programme or our research work, or would like support implementing the programme in your school or nursery, please contact us.
