Parents feed pupils through gates

Jamie Oliver's gonna love this story. Not.

As new labour-new fascist supporter Jamie Oliver is now agitating for packed lunches to be banned, this will no doubt be made a criminal offence in his brave new world.

quote:

Originally posted by bob mccluckie:
As new labour-new fascist supporter Jamie Oliver is now agitating for packed lunches to be banned, this will no doubt be made a criminal offence in his brave new world.

Only a matter of time I fear. Let's face it, banning packed lunches is a hell of a lot easier than fixing the NHS/Tax Credits/Criminal justice/Pensions/etc....

Willy.

quote:

agitating for packed lunches to be banned

It will be so much better to see young adults dying of heart attacks intead,after they make their own food choices.

Au contraire
I worked for 25 years in the school system in 4 different schools, of which only 1 had a kitchen. The rest transported the food from council kitchens miles away. The water the food was stewed in would have been more nutritious than the slop that arrived. My 3 children never had a school dinner, they always took a packed lunch so they ate food that I knew the provenance of, that hadn't been bought at the lowest possible price off wholesalers who didn't give a damn about the quality of food they provided as long as it maximised their profit, or supplied by farmers who didn't care about poisoning whoever ate their insecticide, pesticide laden junk as long as their yield was as big as possible. Of course you can insist that nanny labour knows best. Consider their lauded free fruit scheme. One day I might tell you what the fruit was like that got delivered to the schools I was in!

I'm with Bob on this one. My kids take packed lunches therefore giving me , and SWMBO, control over the provenance of what they eat. Not about to surrender that just because the education system has failed a generation re nutrition. And that's before you even get me started on the perceived wisdom of what is good and bad. Margerine used to be good, now it's bad. Eggs used to be bad, now they're good. Breast milk is a high fat (red traffic light) food. etc.
I sympathise with the kids that are not getting a good diet but that's no reason to punish mine. Seeing the mess the state has made in pretty much every area they control I am not about to give them control ovre my kids diet.

Willy.

Forty years ago, I received a nutritionally balanced 'school dinner' for five bob a week.

Who fucked that up then?

Progress eh?

John.

I didn't.
I too paid 5 bob a week
I think you'll find what was considered balanced 40 years ago wouldn't pass muster today.

I seem to remember plenty of fresh green veg being served up. OK; there might have been a bit of stodge for desert on occasions, but I guess we burnt off more calories back then by using our legs to get to and from school.

Parents tended not to pander to the whims of children's appetites, and you eat what was served at home, or went hungry.

I find it laughable that we currently have all this nonsense with something that worked perfectly well, a long time ago.

John.

JN

In the 1950's, school meals were designed by nutritionists. They had to have the correct level of proteins, vitimains and fats etc.

That is why you had so many rice puddings and tapioca and the bottle of milk.

Today it is down to budget.

I have to say, those women passing fish and chips through the railings really should be ashamed of themselves.

Regards

Mick

fish and chips is quite a healthy meal, it's only the way it is cooked that makes it unhealthy. Any road, you need to eat three times the fruit to one piece of forty years ago, as all the land today is very exhausted from mass produce.
Exercise is the real key here!

regards

A child's education about food should start at home, but the problem is that today so many parents are relatively uneducated about such things themselves.

Left to their own devices many kids will eat junk food.

Many parents see nothing wrong with this as evidenced by the women pushing sausages and chips through the fence.

The 'nanny state' has a duty to ensure that its subjects remain healthy and safe despite their protestations about freedom etc.

You only have to look at the situation with seatbelts in the seventies to see that people will not comply and take responsibility for their own heath if you 'ask nicely' (like Jimmy Saville did!). It was only when the law was passed that attitudes to wearing seatbelts changed.

If these mums were pushing cigarettes through the fence what would we say then? But the type of food they want their kids to eat can be almost as detrimental to health.

Perhaps plenty of people do ensure that their kids eat plenty of fresh fruit and veg, but enough don't to ensure that the UK is way up the obesity league.

I agree that the quality of school meals should be improved dramatically and that a return to the 1950's values, as suggested by Mick, of choosing meals for their nutritional value is in order.

There also needs to be a plan to educate pupils properly about nutrition so that they can influence their parents (like they did with us in the seventies in respect of smoking).

Mark

Why did the bottle of milk ever stop?

Was it not mrs T who stopped free school milk?
matt.

Indeed it was
and abolished nutritional standards in 1980
and subsequently forced the outsourcing of school meals to the cheapest private bid

quote:

Originally posted by J.N.:
Forty years ago, I received a nutritionally balanced 'school dinner' for five bob a week.

Who fucked that up then?

Progress eh?

John.

Same person who abolished the free school milk, presumably? [edit : have just seen that Bob beat me to the post - and with technical details - impressive, Bob!]

John,
I too am the product of an allegedly nutritionally-balanced school meals (and a willing participant in very vigourous exercise three times a week!)...

Perhaps it was between you leaving and me starting that that well-known fresh green vegetable, the nutritionally-balanced deep fried spam fritter, chips and beans, was introduced...?

This week I'm off to a conference for all the 'employees of my organisation'. For financial reasons (cos the 'chairman' discovered it's cheaper than anywhere suitable in UK) we're being made to slum it in France, where they serve notoriously bad food. That'll be a penance, then.

See you Saturday, and looking forward to it (and wait for the smile on my face when I get the free HiLine...).
James

I think that Oliver's campaign has highlighted several problems, of which school dinners are but one. A walk through any town centre / shopping mall of a weekend does rather leave the impression that there are far far too many seriously overwight people out there; of all ages. I think it is really sad when I see a clearly overwight 10 yo. It is not their fault, but they are the ones who suffer. Such individuals cannot be proud of the way they look, and it is not the sole fault of schools. I am not suggesting that everyone should be bean pole thin, but surely it would be better to tackle the problem at an early age when it is easier to exert some level of control than when a kid reaches the age of 10 or 11.

Even the most nutritional school meal is little use in the long term if the ruling culture is no excercise, junk food, etc. I know it may not be PC, but what is wrong with teachers having a discrete word in the ear of parents with kids who look like they are running the risk of developing a problem??? What I suspect is the situation is that teachers really don't care, nor are encouraged to care about more than meeting performance targets. Someone who is overweight is overweight, fact. Why not accept this as a specific problem, ie, child 'A' is overwight and do something about it.

quote:

Originally posted by David Legge:
...What I suspect is the situation is that teachers really don't care, nor are encouraged to care about more than meeting performance targets...

David,
As the husband of a teacher who cares deeply about the children entrusted to her care, in a school where all the staff - teaching and non-teaching - and governors have a shared outlook (and the same is true of all the many schools I have known, around the Country), I have to wonder whether that comment is based on any actual fact, or whether it is just offensive and opinionated bigotted bollocks?

Another case of the typical 'We've got a problem, let's blame the teachers - they're a soft target'.

One thing that is true is that all schools do have to work within the law, and the requirements of legislation - why do you think 'Teacher TV' is on Freeview (and other media, presumably) at 01:00? Because they're still up doing their marking, the prep for the next day, and the admin (which also takes up most of the holidays before you go down that hackneyed old route).

James

JWM, base on my own experience. There are obviously exceptions, but my own view is that things could be an awful lot better if more people actually cared. I am not just speaking here about schools, but all/any organisation public or private. People who actually care are the exception rather than the rule.

/dl

David
How naive you are!
If I had had a 'quiet word in the ear' at any of the 4 deprived, inner city Manchester schools I worked in I would have been lucky to have escaped with being told to 'fuck off'. On the rare occasion there would have been a man around I would also have been probably punched.
And you know something else - they'd have been right, cos it would have been none of my business!

Along similar lines, there is an item on the bbc news site about the plight of modern childrens standards, etc.
I think that its more the modern parents that are the problem, & the kids are merely a by-product of that problem. This may not apply to leafy villages in Surrey, but I feel is applicable to too many large parts of the UK.
matt.

quote:

If I had had a 'quiet word in the ear' at any of the 4 deprived, inner city Manchester schools I worked in I would have been lucky to have escaped with being told to 'fuck off'. On the rare occasion there would have been a man around I would also have been probably punched.

Does not surprise me at all. Same would apply in most/many of the schools in the more deprived areas of Sheffield which is where I grew up and where still I have friends who work in and who have kids in the schools there. However, I think you are wrong in saying it is none of your business. By "your" I mean the school system in general. Surely, the kids that parents are obliged to put in the care of schools, and society in general that funds the schools, should expect that schools not only teach academic subjects (OK, at best, reading, writing and basic maths if we are talking about a school on t'Manor) but take an active role in developing pupils as citizens. Does the concept of in loco parentis, "the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent," not exist anymore? I am not for a nanny state where policy/principles are dictated to from on high, but would certainly welcome closer, more active relationships between schools and parents. This may be utopian, but it should not be impossible.

From the BBC.

quote:

One in four children in England is obese, and schools are beginning tests to see if their pupils are overweight.

From next year, pupils will be weighed and measured as they start primary school and again before they leave.

Parents of any obese four- or 10-year-olds can expect a letter telling them their child faces long-term health damage unless they lose weight

No doubt there will be a significant number of parents (Especially in Manchester's inner city) who, on recieving such a letter, will be heading down to the school to tell the headmaster to 'fuck off' or maybe even give him/her a punch in the face.

/dl

In loco parentis doesn't seem to apply any more. If children abscond from school during the day the parents are held responsible.

arbitrary?