Healthy School Dinners
You can tell that an election is looming when the Prime Minister, no less, is quick to back a campaign that school dinners be made healthier and food cooked freshly. Such campaigns have been around for years, but thanks to Jamie Oliver and Channel 4’s shrewd decision to broadcast their latest food series in the run-up to the election, this time the voices have been heard. And the beauty is that once in place, no future government will be able to refute the changes. We will have healthier, smarter and cooler kids, as J himself put it.
Even better news is that Blair is in talks with the Soil Association about offering organic food in schools which I hope will mean that the ingredients will not be sourced solely from factory farms. There is a (very slow) increase of food awareness in Britain which, over the next couple of years, may well lead to a food revolution. Just when we were about to move to Australia in disgust. Damn.
I don’t have kids myself, but what I have seen has angered me—which goes to show that this initiative is a sure-fire vote winner not just from parents but from a great many people (I don’t vote, but that’s another matter).
Intruigingly, a while after junk food was scrapped in one Greenwich primary, the teachers remarked that inhalers had not been used where usually there was a steady demand. Of course, this could be coincidence, but would it not be shocking if additives were linked to asthma attacks in some children? Studies should be set up to monitor changes in children’s health and performance in class as schools change their menus—this is too important, and too good an opportunity, to miss.
If this turns out to be the case, I wonder if we could sue junk food provider for damaging consumer health…
Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with travel, but here’s a link to school dinners around the World 😉
Tags: Neither here nor there, Tag Index
Denni