As a mum who watched Jamie Oliver's exposé of the school meals in the UK with great interest ... and a mum who was sadly not surprised to see the pictures of Mums ferrying crates of fish and chips and feeding it through the railings to the children once Jamie's changes had been introduced, I am sorry to say that I am not surprised the take-up was difficult and not as widespread as hoped.
The problem was the way in which it was introduced ... I think a fair compromise could have been reached and children "weaned" away from their sadly cherished junk food. The main problem is that the damage has often been done before they get to school - busy families have less time to cook and those who are not traditionally domestically adept even less compulsion to serve up nutritious healthy meals to their off-spring. Therefore, with these eating habits already a problem, to suddenly remove it in such a drastic way was never going to be easy. Far better to have done a deal and I have been assured that in some Local Authorities they have a "chips every other day" policy - which has worked really quite well.
The most worrying thing for me is to learnt that it's the children on free school meals who aren't eating ... and they are the ones who really should be ... a bit of a compromise would have softened the blow and gradually introduced the children into more "pukka" eating habits.
ps. I married into a family of foodies, so my boys would prefer pasta to chips any day and much to my disgust devour olives by the handful.
1 replies:
That is correct.
Thankfully I was brought up to appreciate food, but my wife is one of the fussiest eaters I've ever met. I'm slowly converting her and since meeting me she's expanded her horizons and will try a lot more, but simply trying to force her to eat what that sort of thing would be disastrous.
I'm sure the same goes for children.
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