When my children were at school (they are now in their early 20’s), my daughters did home economics.  There was a lot of cooking being done and being a nutritionist I was very interested in the ingredients.  I called the teacher and asked what were the basic ingredients of the cakes and foods they were preparing.  She informed me that margarine was the main fat, to which I replied that I would be sending in with my children butter to replace margarine in any foods they were preparing.  I also let the home economics teacher aware that I was appalled that margarine was being used,

Last week one of our customers (A – name submitted but withheld to protect her identity) sent us the following note she received from her child’s science teacher, warning them that they were doing an exciting science lesson and making butter from cream and that the children would get a chance to taste the butter on a small piece of white bread.  The note was asking permission for the consumption of butter.

“A” sent the letter in with the following comment “My daughter just brought the attached notice home from school. Little did we realise how dangerous butter is!!! I obviously have no problems at all with my daughter having butter (and I think it’s truly great that the school are doing such a fabulous thing at school), but why not ask if I have a problem with her having white bread?”

While “A” was upset about the white bread which I would have been too, I was also disturbed about the message being sent to the children by what they call a science experiment.  Butter is made by churning cream, it isn’t a science experiment it is a traditional process that has been done to cream for thousands of years to make butter and ghee.  In actual fact we can make butter in our kitchen we don’t need a laboratory.  This should have been taught in home economics.

What I believe would be more apt would be to show how margarine is made in the chemical laboratory (as it cannot be made in the kitchen), by doing the experiment of  hydrogenation, fractionation and interesterification of a vegetable oil.

When I read this  this note,  I shook my head and I’m still shaking my head that this is being done in a science lab and called a science experiment. And that we see margarine as a perfectly OK food to use in home economics and have put butter into the realm of science the room.

“A” also let us know that not only did her daughter try the butter straight from the spoon but so did quite a few other children in the science class.

Let me know what you all think and send in some crazy notes you have received from the school your children attend where you found yourself shaking your head.  We may find quite a collection of interesting un common sense out there.