For those of you who don't know, I teach secondary school Food Technology (which is somewhere between Food Science and the Home Economics some of the older generation may remember). For those of you in the USA, secondary school covers some of middle school and some of high school - ages ranges 11 to 16. In this interestingly exalted position, I get to hear some rather odd things. Over the last few years these have included:

16yo boy: "Don't cows lay eggs?"

13yo girl: "Chef... isn't bacon a type of bird?"

15yo boy: "Chickens come from eggs? Really? Are you sure?"

14yo boy to his friend: "Dude, c'mon, everyone knows bacon and ham are different animals."

But the things I hear which most often worries me, are students as young as 11 (and, yes, most of them female) telling me during nutrition lesson that I am wrong because: "wheat is poison", "carbs are really bad for you", and "fruit contains sugar". Lots of this, they get from their parents (mostly mothers in questioning) who are on diets and trying to lose weight. They don't like it well I tell them that none of these things are true (not in the way they think they are) and that a healthy diet should contain carbohydrates, wheat is only poisonous if you suffer from coeliac disease, and that the sugar contained in fruit is in no way comparable to processed sugar cane that they pour liberally on everything they eat.

My big problem, is that so much of this information is not coming from their parents, but from YouTubers, Food Bloggers, and Lifestyle Gurus who have about as many qualifications between them as my dog does (like him, their hearts might be in the right place, but they're talking out their arses much of the time).

There is a trend, on the rise over the last few years, but prevalent for at least a decade or so of fun new dietary fads. Clean Eating, Paleo diet, Raw food, the list goes on and on and on. And most of the people spouting this stuff know... nothing.

My job is to teach children how to cook and why they need to eat foods (other than that they taste nice) and my job is being hampered by the celebrities of the internet. Well bugger.