Camille Labro

Camille aims to transform the way children and adults relate to food, promoting healthy, delicious, and ecological eating habits by integrating comprehensive food education into the school system.

Camille is changing the eating habits of children and their families by equipping them with the tools to understand, appreciate, and engage with healthy food and to create sustainable eating habits. Her organization, L’école comestible, is transforming how food education is approached in schools as a way to change children’s relationship with food and improve their nutrition. In France, families’ eating habits are worsening and a growing number of people face health issues linked to poor nutrition. Families cannot always afford to buy healthy food and education around nutrition is lacking. The existing nutrition programs in France are extracurricular and usually only tackle one aspect of food education. They are not scalable and do not impact children and families on a large scale. Most only work with children without measuring the impact on families’ eating habits. L’école comestible is the first association in France that transforms eating habits by working directly with children and doing extensive lobbying and advocacy work to change the nutrition landscape and the French education system. L’école comestible is also the only organization in France that the Ministry of Education has approved to provide three-year nutrition education programs for children.

Camille addresses a fundamental gap in the curriculum that aims to teach children about the origins of their food and the impact of their food choices on the environment and their health. L’école comestible’s holistic approach to education integrates food literacy and hands-on learning experiences that don’t just teach children but actively engage them in the earth to table food value chain. This provides children with the knowledge and tools to become active participants in building a sustainable future. By introducing children to the entire food cycle from seed to plate, L’école comestible challenges the traditional education system focused on abstract and theoretical knowledge. Aware of the top-down, theoretical approach to learning in France, she introduced an innovative teaching method based on experience, know-how, and teamwork. Camille makes an effort to link her programs with other mandatory school subjects, such as math and history so that children understand how food is connected to everything. She also trains extracurricular supervisors on her programs to ensure that all school staff are on the same page. This innovative approach fosters a deep connection between children and their food sources.

Unlike many one-off or outside-school initiatives, Camille implements her programs directly in schools, integrating them into the school curriculum through teachers. After experimenting with different ways to offer the programming, she found that it had the greatest impact when integrated into school learning, and facilitated by the same teachers the students rely on for other types of learning. She leverages her expertise in the French education system and her extensive networks within both the public and private sectors to create a comprehensive program that integrates food education into the core curriculum of primary schools. By collaborating with teachers, school administrators, policymakers, and local communities, Camille ensures that the principles of L’école comestible are effectively implemented and sustained. Camille seeks to transform entire educational ecosystems by training teachers to run Ecole Comestible workshops and providing them with ready-made teaching kits. L’école comestible also runs school gardens that provide students with hands-on learning experiences. Her programs are applicable in all educational contexts by equipping teachers with the tools to teach about food and the flexibility to decide how they would like to teach it. So far, Camille has focused her efforts on lower-income neighborhoods in areas where families do not have access to fresh produce at an affordable price. She quickly realized she had the most impact in low-income neighborhoods in food deserts where nutrition education was scarce. Understanding that food education alone cannot solve the nutrition crisis, Camille also works to address the problem of access to healthy foods. She strongly believes that nutrition education must be accompanied by providing quality meals in school canteens and thus is actively campaigning for school canteen reform.

Ultimately, Camille’s vision is to implement her scalable model in every school in France. By educating children about food, getting them excited about healthy food practices, and empowering them with the knowledge to make informed choices, L’école comestible is cultivating a generation of citizens prepared to make an impact through their food choices. Her work has shown a significant impact not only on children’s understanding and appreciation of healthy food but also on their families’ eating habits.

The French population eats poorly starting from an early age. Only 20% of children consume the five recommended daily portions of fruits and vegetables.1 Sweet products account for around 17% of the energy intake of children aged 3 to 17. Four percent of children aged 6 to 17 and 17% of adults are obese. When overweight people are included, the prevalence rises to 17% and 49%, respectively.2 Heart disease is on the rise, especially in poor communities.

The industrialization of agriculture has radically transformed how the majority of food is produced. The advent of large-scale, highly specialized farming came with the use of advanced technologies, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and GMOs. This shift was motivated by the ambition to maximize yields and reduce costs. The prioritization of efficiency over sustainability has led to soil degradation, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and many other environmental problems. The industrialization of agriculture has also transformed the food system, making it less resilient to climate change and economic shocks. This shift has provoked a lack of knowledge about food, especially for those living in urban areas.

For most people, nutrition is not a priority. Due to a lack of time, resources, and education, people tend to prioritize cheap, efficient, industrially transformed food over cooking good quality produce. Sedentary lifestyles characterized by increased screen time and reduced physical activity exacerbate the effects of an unbalanced diet. People have a minimal understanding of where their food comes from, how it is produced, and the environmental impact of food choices, which perpetuates unsustainable and unhealthy consumption patterns and exacerbates environmental issues. Unequal access to healthy food is also a problem that affects communities throughout France. Because of geographical inequalities, access to healthy food is limited. In food deserts, supermarket and market options are scarce, which is conducive to poorer-quality food. Processed products, which are often cheaper and more accessible than fresh food, are widely consumed, especially in low-income households.

These products also tend to be the most advertised on TV, social media and in public. Significant disparities in diet quality depending on socio-economic background lead to broader public health issues. Wealthier individuals have better access to nutritious and healthy diets, while lower-income individuals are more likely to be impacted by obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. The most affluent consume half as many sweet beverages and twice as many fruits and vegetables as people in precarious situations.3

The French education system overlooks food literacy and sustainable practices, failing to teach children where their food comes from, how it is produced and the impact it can have on the environment. There is insufficient support for innovative educational models in France due to rigid curricula and a lack of funding. This results in new generations being unable to make informed and sustainable choices, which contributes to worsening health, ecological degradation, and a disconnect from nature.

The combination of these factors creates a world where people eat poorly. L’école comestible’s philosophy relies on the idea that knowledge is the key to power, and once we are aware of the mechanisms causing us to eat poorly and we are given the tools to understand better ways of eating, we can overcome these issues. Beyond education around nutrition, Camille acts on various levels to alleviate geographical, economic, and systemic obstacles that prevent people from eating well. L’école comestible enacts change on all levels, from policymakers to teachers to children.

Camille’s strategy focuses on transforming food education by integrating it directly into the school curriculum using a "Soil to Table" model. The approach includes mandatory modules, additional options, and community connections to strengthen children's understanding of food, its supply chain, and ecosystem. By training teachers and supporting school gardens, the model aims to engage the entire school community, particularly in low-income areas, ensuring sustainability and self-sufficiency. Advocacy for healthier school canteens, partnerships with cooperatives, and family workshops address accessibility and affordability. Lastly, L’école comestible’s important media presence helps raise awareness around the broader food system.

Camille’s idea is to fundamentally change how children are educated about healthy eating. The whole program revolves around an earth-to-table educational model. Camille’s strategy includes developing a wide range of adaptable educational tools and resources, such as lesson plans, workshops, and interactive activities that align with national education standards. This allows schools to integrate them into their existing curriculums seamlessly. L’école comestible supports educational professionals in setting up gardening and cooking workshops around major cross-cutting themes. After studying children's learning methods in France, Camille realized that children were not engaging in active learning in a way that allowed them to retain information well. Going completely against what is traditionally done in France, Camille developed a unique methodology for children based on learning by doing using beautiful tools and fun long-term workshops, with six workshops per year for each class from kindergarten to 8th grade. Schools are supported for 3 to 8 years, depending on the program. The curriculum for those in kindergarten and first grade focuses on the living world, from seed to plant. The curriculum for children in grades 2 and 3 focuses on the transformation of the living world from harvest to plant. Grades 4 and 5 focus on world cultures. There are three compulsory edible workshops and a variety of add-on workshops that teachers can choose to do, that address topics such as the use and history of spices. The mandatory workshops revolve around seasonal vegetables, seeds, and taste and sense. Referent animators, who act as the link between L’école comestible and teachers, animate these workshops. L’école comestible has also launched a trial run of Edible Workshops for families in the evening.

Camille considers that food education is part of something larger on a social, digital, and educational scale. In the long term, by involving them in every step of the process, children understand the connection between themselves, their food and everyone involved in the production process. Camille brings real-world experiences into schools through partnerships with local farmers, chefs and environmental organizations. These partnerships provide students with opportunities to visit farms and participate in food-related community projects. In some schools, families are able to discover organic farms that sell fresh produce near their homes at supermarket prices. Connecting the model to the supply chain and ecosystem around food in classrooms paves the way for children to view and understand nutrition in a more global holistic way. To further enrich the educational experience, nutrition education can be tied to mandatory core subjects. For example, fractions can be taught by cutting vegetables, and the origins of a vegetable or spice can be taught through a historical lens so that children can understand how and why it has traveled from one place to another, as is the case with native South American bell peppers becoming a staple in European supermarkets.

It is crucial to Camille for L’école comestible’s programs to become a part of the mandatory curriculum. Camille also insists on the importance of her programs being implemented during the school day. When teaching nutrition education during regular school hours, children have proven to be more concentrated. Camille’s goal is to target all schools regardless of families’ socioeconomic background, but with many families in disadvantaged neighborhoods having expressed the need for nutrition education, she has been prioritizing these schools. Underfunded schools and schools that have preexisting gardens are prioritized because the implementation of programs is smoother. To integrate schools, L’école comestible releases a call for applications. Once a school is selected, L’école comestible narrows down the selection to 4 teachers who wish to get involved. They currently offer one-year or three-year programs. The one-year program, Programme Embarque, has proven to be the most efficient and impactful. It accompanies teachers throughout the school year and teaches them to implement workshops. The key is for each of the four teachers to master a subject and then teach it to classes that are not their own. A growing number of teachers have expressed their interest in participating. The idea is for them to be 100% independent and capable of continuing to animate workshops in the following years.

L’école comestible has integrated the teacher training system. Their six-hour initial training course raises awareness of the importance of nutrition education and encourages teachers to rethink their pedagogical goals. Teachers may then use the pedagogical kits to run workshops autonomously. Every year, the director of a school and a majority of teachers create a global school project for the following year. L’école comestible works to integrate nutrition in these school programs through teachers. For example, the construction and cultivation of a vegetable garden can be part of the school project. The idea is for teachers to be part of the design process and for the whole school to be engaged directly or indirectly. L’école comestible then equips the school with pedagogical tools to innovate the model. In every school where L’école comestible works, they offer to set up edible gardens. Children can grow fruits and vegetables, learn about composting and waste reduction and understand the benefits of plant-based diets. Camille’s broader objective for schools is to succeed in implementing gardens as part of school projects all throughout the French territory. In priority districts in the Paris region, L’école comestible has built vegetable gardens in the middle of the playground, which are now cultivated independently by schoolchildren and educational teams. In many other schools in France, L’école comestible has sown, planted, cultivated and harvested vegetables and fruits with the children. They also collaborated with the World Wildlife Fund’s gardening school. Edible gardens are the setting for L’école comestible’s workshops on seeds, sowing and the plant cycle, but they are also the focus of a Garden Club. In highly motivated schools, individuals of all ages, including parents, can join the Garden Club to learn how to care for plants. Edible gardens weave together essential lessons so children can reconnect with nature through the foundations of a healthy diet from the earth.

As part of her strategy, Camille actively lobbies for her programs to be included in schools and for nutrition to become essential. Her actions are directed toward politicians, deputies, and ministries. One of her goals is to continue advocating for reforms so that the state can support small-scale sustainable farming. L’école comestible works with many committed organizations and public players such as mayors, ministers, and advisors, in order to move the debate forward. They have successfully created partnerships with the French Education Nationale. L’école comestible is also sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Education and participates in ministerial working groups to integrate compulsory nutrition programs in schools. They have participated in numerous roundtables with political decision-makers throughout France and participated in parliamentary days around food education and working groups on improving canteens at the French National Assembly. In 2022, they co-drafted a bill on sustainable food with the Green Lobby. L’école comestible recently contributed to a report on the food transition through access to healthy, sustainable food, which the Institut Montaigne has published. Camille is also in regular contact with the media to disseminate, publicize and infuse L’école comestible’s ideas, values and actions. Sustainable nutrition is currently trending, and Camille seizes these opportunities to obtain as much visibility as possible while being selective about the media platforms she speaks to so as not to be instrumentalized.

In addition to her major lobbying efforts to get food education included in school curricula, Camille believes that it is essential for school meals to echo what is taught in the classroom. This is being done through advocacy work for a school canteen reform. L’école comestible works closely with school canteens and advocates for new approaches based on inspiring models. The following measures are a priority: having a mandatory cook in each canteen kitchen, changing canteens’ public procurement contracts, using high-quality produce, having proper storage facilities, implementing anti-waste measures, and balancing menus by meal rather than by the week. This year, they will start training extra-curricular and canteen staff in edible education and sustainable food. Camille believes that to foster systemic change around the canteen, everyone must change. In the future, Camille would like to offer Canopée-certified4 edible education online training and generate a hybrid model of online and in-person training so educators everywhere can easily access training materials.

One of L’école comestible’s big projects this year is to efficiently give families access to fresh vegetables. Camille has already been identifying partners such as artisans, grocers, farmers and other organizations that share the same ethical values to make a CSO map to create a sustainable supply network. Contact has already been initiated with Biocoop, the first network of specialized organic stores in France to offer organic, local, seasonal and fair-trade products, which has over 2000 shops on the French territory. The goal of Camille’s CSO map is to identify organizations in the sector that can become potential Ecole Comestible partners to help provide fresh affordable produce for her workshops and for families in need. The map will also be available for schools so they can have access to nutrition resources other than L’école comestible. L’école comestible is the first nutrition association in France to actively initiate these types of partnerships.

To measure short-term impact, L’école comestible sets up questionnaires to evaluate children’s food knowledge before and after the six workshops. There are also questionnaires for parents and teachers. The results of these surveys exceed their expectations: 70% of children say they have discovered a new vegetable, 82% of children have tasted a vegetable they had never eaten before and 65% of children are keen to try a new vegetable. 66% of parents say their children eat more vegetables at home since the start of the programs, 87% of parents say they have bought local fruit and vegetables more often as a result of the program, 75% of parents say they have cooked vegetables more often, and 80% of parents believe that food education at school is essential. 75% of children use the edible booklet to discuss the workshops with their parents, and 30% of parents have made a recipe from the booklet with their child. In the medium term, L’école comestible is looking into how the transition is being implemented within schools. In the long term, they want to measure the health, environmental, and well-being impact of L’école comestible’s interventions. With the proper finances, the goal would be to fund a thesis to study their methodology's impact.

Since its creation in 2019, L’école comestible has run 3000 workshops in 105 schools in 7 major French regions, with over 20,000 child beneficiaries and 800 teacher beneficiaries nationwide. L’école comestible is present in 9 of 26 academic regions of the French education system, which represent 45% of children. They aim to have a branch in all 30 academic regions and to obtain national accreditation. So far, 50 people have been trained to run edible workshops, and over 500 volunteers have been involved. L’école comestible has also set up 5 communal vegetable gardens. This year, they selected 8 more schools in Paris in which they will implement their programs. Their main target is children, but ultimately, educators, administrators, parents and many other groups are positively impacted along the way. Camille is also envisioning collaborations with teacher influencers—teachers who have a large following on social media and speak about topics such as education and pedagogy, and to whom other teachers turn for information.

Within the next 10 years, Camille is determined to have L’école comestible’s programs implemented in every school in France, which will indirectly change families’ consumption habits for the better. The broader goal is for the model to be replicated throughout Europe and eventually beyond. Since her programs are in French, they can already easily be used throughout francophone countries, but France is currently the main focus of L’école comestible’s work. Camille also recognizes that reaching more teachers is a very important component of her scale-up. She wants L’école comestible to become part of teachers’ continuous training so that a maximum amount of educators can run workshops independently. In the long run, Camille would like to create the position of edible agent, a local delegate, to accompany each region in spreading edible education.

Camille, born to French parents in California, grew up in a nurturing home where her mother’s culinary skills and her father's passion for gardening instilled in her a deep appreciation for food. After earning her bachelor's in communications in France and a master’s in journalism from NYU, she launched her career as a fashion journalist at Vogue in New York. However, her true calling emerged when she moved back to Paris and transitioned to food journalism and became the food editor of a prominent French magazine. Initially tasked with writing solely about food and restaurants, Camille developed an interest in the producers behind the ingredients and decided to focus on farmers. When others questioned her decision to write about "peasants," she remained steadfast. Eventually, she guided her team at the magazine to broaden their perspective, shifting their focus from the glamorous side of gastronomy to explore the crucial role of farmers and the food supply chain. She reshaped the editorial narrative to emphasize the importance of eating well and the connection between the earth and our plates.

Noticing a gap in food education in her own children’s schools, Camille initiated widely successful workshops, sparking a movement that led to the founding of l’École Comestible in 2019. The name Ecole Comestible is a tribute to the Edible Schoolyard in California that she is very close to and has been a source of inspiration for her project. Camille’s mission is to transform the eating habits of future generations. An accomplished author of documentaries and cookbooks, she champions ecological, artisanal and human values. Camille thrives on collaboration and is committed to integrity, refusing any funding from the mainstream food industry. Determined and resourceful, she continually seeks to share her vision and make a meaningful impact in the world of food education.