TV presenter and farmer Adam Henson has launched #FeedMeTruth, a national campaign so children know where the food on their plate has come from.

This follows some shocking findings in a survey by the British Nutrition Foundation.

It was conducted with 27,500 children across the UK and found that nearly a third (29 per cent) of five to seven-year-olds thought that: cheese came from a plant, not an animal, tomatoes grow underground, fish fingers are made of chicken, plus according to more than one in ten (13 per cent) of eight to 11-year-olds pasta comes from an animal.

Adam hopes to encourage every nursery and school to commit to making their food supply chain transparent, thereby creating a generational shift in how the nation engages with and values food provenance.

He said: “The appreciation and understanding of food starts with children simply knowing how and where the ingredients on their plate were produced, but they don’t. They have no idea. Every school dinner has a story to tell - a journey. It leaves a footprint. We need every child to explore it and be inspired and learn from it.”

The campaign will offer for nurseries, and free of charge for state primary and secondary schools, a way to show the journey of every plate of food and drive the change through supply chains.

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Adam hopes every school and nursery in the country will commit to making their food supply chain transparent, using technology to deliver into school dining rooms this journey. The service and technology is being provided by Happerley, a not for profit organisation founded by farmers to validate the provenance of food ingredients and empower consumers to know where their food is from.

Happerley founder, farmer Matthew Rymer, said: “The food industry remains one of the least transparent and we are not told the origins of most of the ingredients in our food. Children are particularly susceptible to buying into brands and clever marketing because they do not know or understand better.

"By working through the food chain to deliver the full story of the ingredients that make their school dinners, our hope is we can create a seismic change in understanding for the future that impacts positively on their health and nutrition, the environment and sustainable food production.”