National vote for Children's favourite meal! Children: have your say!

What is our children's favourite dish? Curry is said to be the nation's most popular meal, but what would kids say? The Children's Food Festival is calling on children across the country to vote for what they want to eat - more than anything else. Voters can win a cookery course at the Raymond Blanc Cookery School.

Eating habits are linked to health as well as to behaviour, concentration and learning. We think we know what children like to eat - but do we really? This vote will tell us what children want to eat and the Children's Food Festival will show kids how they can eat to stay healthy. Sophie Grigson will cook a healthy version of the winning meal at the Children's Food Festival on 27 & 28 June.

Run by the Northmoor Trust, the Children's Food Festival aims to improve children's health and wellbeing by introducing them to new foods and cooking through colourful and fun hands-on activities. Children can try out all kinds of cooking, from baking bread to sushi rolling in the Kids' Kitchens. Other highlights include: open fire cookery, bicycle-powered smoothie-making, the observation beehive, the Vegetable Orchestra and The Smell Tent run by the Academy of Culinary Arts.

Children can vote for their own favourite meal or choose one from a list of suggested meals, drawn up in consultation with children. The list includes:

• Bangers and Mash
• Chinese Stir Fry
• Chicken and Chips
• Chicken Curry
• Macaroni Cheese
• Pasta and Pesto
• Toad in the Hole

Children can register their vote by going to www.childrensfoodfestival.co.uk/vote

The vote closes on Monday 22 June 2009. The first Children's Food Festival drew crowds of over 16,000 and the Northmoor Trust expect even more at this second Festival - to be held on the Trust's Farm, ten miles south of Oxford.

Sophie Grigson says that her son has a passion for pasta: "When we went to Italy a few years ago, when he was around 11, he was quite disappointed to discover that they didn't serve pasta for breakfast. He'd hoped he could eat it three times a day, but just had to make do with twice."

For more information on the Children's Food Festival, to be held at Northmoor Trust Farm, near Oxford, on 27 & 28 June, click here