One school nutrition director’s reflections from the 24th Global Child Nutrition Forum held in Osaka, Japan.

It was an anxiety I hadn’t anticipated on this trip to Osaka, Japan: sitting at a first-grade desk, a classroom of 6-year-olds watching me with intense curiosity as I picked up my chopsticks and approached the items on my school lunch tray. I never held my pencil the “right” way as a child and remember being embarrassed as my first-grade teacher tried to correct me in front of the class. I had no idea how bad my chopstick skills would look to these kids. Was I using the correct fingers to hold the sticks? How much food would I drop as I tried to eat my lunch?