UK: Minister calls for children to be locked in school to stop them buying junk food

The Evening Standard (U.K.) ^ | July 6, 2008

[Stoat]

Minister calls for children to be locked in school to stop them buying junk food

Last updated at 16:47pm on 06.07.08

 

Children's Minister Kevin Brennan has called for secondary school children to be locked inside school grounds during breaks to stop them buying unhealthy food

Children should be locked inside school grounds to stop them buying unhealthy food from shops and takeaways, a minister said yesterday.

The drastic proposal comes amid new evidence that the Jamie Oliver-inspired drive to ensure school canteens offer more nutritious meals is being shunned by pupils.

Children's Minister Kevin Brennan said secondary school children should be barred from leaving the premises during breaks after research found they were spending their money on snacks with high levels of salt, sugar or fat.

But the idea of such lock-ins - which famously resulted in mothers at one Rotherham school passing takeaway meals through railings - was immediately condemned as unworkable and another example of the 'nanny state'.

Television chef Jamie Oliver spearheaded a highly-successful campaign to remove junk food from school menus.

However while the Government was forced to commit millions to replacing them with pasta, vegetables and fish, pupils have been turning their backs.

The number of secondary school children eating school meals plunged by 400,000 to barely a third, and yesterday's study found some of those who buy their own food during the day are consuming their entire daily allowance of fat and sugar in one sitting.

Backing a plea by the renowned cook Prue Leith, who chairs the School Food Trust, Mr Brennan it was time to bar pupils from leaving school grounds during the day.

'Some schools have a stay-on-site policy for 11- to 16-year-olds but let the sixth form go off-site,' he said. 'I'm very strongly supportive of that approach.

'I would like to see more schools operating some sort of stay-on-site policy because its advantages are shown not just in improved uptake (of school meals), but also improved behaviour and community relationships.'

The pitfalls of such a policy were illustrated in 2006 when two mothers of children at Rawmarsh Comprehensive in Rotherham started their own takeaway delivery service in response to curbs on pupils' trips to local shops.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said a lock-in policy was impracticable.

'Much as schools would like to keep children on site at lunchtime, the number of exits in some - as many as 20 - make this almost impossible,' he said.

And Andy Hibberd, of support group the Parent Organisation, said: 'It is very nanny state-ist, totally unworkable and impractical - it is taking away parental choice and treating older children as babies.'

Yesterday's research underlined quite how unhealthy the snacks being bought by children during breaks in the school day are.

A team from the Nutrition Policy Unit at London Metropolitan University studied pupils at two large comprehensives - one in a deprived urban setting and another in a well-off suburban area.

The inner-city school allowed all pupils to leave the premises at lunchtime, while the suburban school only allowed sixth formers the same privilege.

In the school where pupils were allowed out, just 15 per cent visited the canteen.

Even in the school which kept them inside the grounds, less than half (44 per cent) used the canteen, usually to buy sandwiches or wraps, with many buying food on the way to school.

Virtually all the children who were allowed out bought food from local shops, mainly fizzy drinks, chocolate, sweets, crisps, cakes, biscuits ad chips.

Most were high in fat, salt or sugar, with girls' eating habits even less healthy than boys, and some shops and takeaways had deals and offers to target children as well as faster service than school canteens.

'One takeaway we observed served 63 pupils with chips, burgers and sausages within half an hour,' said Jack Winkler, professor of nutrition policy.

Among the most alarming examples were a £1 portion of chicken and chips containing 53.2g of fat, well over half what a child should be eating in a whole day.

Another popular product, a 500ml bottle of Ribena, contains 60.5g of sugar, more than a teenage girl should have in a whole day.

But it was not the healthy menus in school canteens themselves that were the turn-off, the researchers found, but problems such as long queues, poor facilities and high prices.

They said schools considering locking children on the premises ought to address these issues first, a finding backed by Oliver last night.

'If you look at what's going on in schools where the catering staff have got the right support and where a "dining culture" is developing, that's where it's working,' he said.

'But there's a big divide between these schools and the many where there are still problems.'

[Stoat]

Kevin Brennan - Contact Details

Constituency

Kevin Brennan MP
Cardiff West Constituency Office
Transport House
Cathedral Road
Cardiff
CF11 9SD
Tel: 02920 223 207
Fax: 02920 230 422
Email: Click Here

Westminster

Kevin Brennan MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Tel: 020 7219 3572
Fax: 020 7219 1753
Email: brennank@parliament.uk

[Maelstorm]

Hahahaha hahahahahahahaha ahhh geesh I can not help but laugh.

[goldstategop]

We'll force them to eat "healthy" food - for their own good, of course. The children mustn't be allowed to decide what they would like to eat. That would be politically incorrect.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Arm_Bears]

In the alternative, how about locking up (after flogging) elected officials who come up with asinine proposals.

[Stoat]

[Arthur McGowan]

Obviously, eating the government’s food should be MANDATORY. No options. Each child gets a plateful, and must shovel it down under the supervision of a guard.

Better yet, since parents are obviously not teaching their children how to eat right, lock the kids in the government school 24/7. Since “marriage” has already been abolished, there’s really no such thing as a “parent” or a “family” anymore, anyway.

Better yet, put each child to work part of the day on a cycle-type apparatus, to put energy back into the electric grid. This will provide healthful exercise, in addition to the healthful diet the school is providing.

Better yet, hook each child’s brain and spinal column into the electric grid. And feed the brain educational and enjoyable images to keep the whole system stimulated.

Government school. The ONLY way to keep society from fragmenting.

[LibFreeOrDie]

Looks like Kevin could do with less food himself - or did he get the double chin by eating lettuce?

[calex59]

When I was young, back in the day, this guy would have stoned to death by pi**** off British citizens. Now they merely shrug or simply take it with a "what can you do" attitude.

We must keep pushing back or they will be doing this here in the US also. Our schools are already like indoctrination centers in some ways and we need to fight to get the feds out of government and to wrest back control of school from the state socialists that run them.

[JoanneSD]

LOL, I was thinking the same thing.. Kevin had been eating quite a bit of fish and chips, to get that double chin..

[lowbridge]

bump

[Stoat]

Hahahaha hahahahahahahaha ahhh geesh I can not help but laugh.

The sad part about all this is that such a call is appropriately met by healthy derision from normal people, but to a breathtakingly large number of Socialists this is completely in keeping with their way of thinking and is viewed as a very thoughtful and rational solution to what they consider to be Government's role in managing the day-to-day upkeep and maintenance of it's subjects.

Their position is emboldened whenever some miscreant hoodie yob is rumbled for some astonishingly ultraviolent offense, and the 'parent' is interviewed on TV while crying hysterically and complaining that she had lost control of her litter, and how the Government failed to help her enough.

[Chewbacca]

What a fascist.

[Stoat]

We'll force them to eat "healthy" food - for their own good, of course. The children mustn't be allowed to decide what they would like to eat. That would be politically incorrect.

"Please, sir, I want some more"

 

[Stoat]

In the alternative, how about locking up (after flogging) elected officials who come up with asinine proposals.

Your proposal is far too rational, thoughtful and effective to be allowed serious consideration in the Socialist Utopia.

The penalty for providing realistic, workable solutions such as yours typically involves a Hate Speech charge.  Be warned.

[Maelstorm]

You are exactly right. We have the same thing here. One school banned backpacks that weren’t translucent as a way to prevent kids smuggling in guns. Not that the school had a problem with that but you know anything to keep the kids safe. They could try discipline and kicking out the troublemakers but that would require the school administrators earn their keep.

The best way to get kids to be healthy is to confiscate their ipods and portable game systems and cell phones on the way out the door to recess. Maybe they could chase them around with cattle prods or something. Keeping them locked in schools to keep them from eating sweets would be the last thing I’d be worried about children acquiring.

It is one reason we home school. I don’t have time to worry about such silliness. Some of the stuff would just make me laugh which is harmless enough but there is plenty that would just make me angry. I don’t like to get angry so we opt out of the insanity. We get to take vacations when we like, our kids generally like our company, and we generally like the company our kids keep at church and at the various sports they are involved in. We don’t isolate our kids and they even watch tv and play violent video games. The difference is we dictate our lives not the government schedule and I like it that way.

[Stoat]

Better yet, since parents are obviously not teaching their children how to eat right, lock the kids in the government school 24/7.

Considering the Leftist indoctrination inflicted upon Society through TV and other media, such a situation already exists for many. The programming (and reprogramming) is constant and consistent, and dissent is not tolerated.

[Signalman]

The nanny-state. Coming to America soon.

[Stoat]

Looks like Kevin could do with less food himself - or did he get the double chin by eating lettuce?

No mention is made of a wife or children in his online bio, and so it may be that he is accustomed to Government-run (and taxpayer-funded) eateries in Parliament buildings for his meals....another fine endorsement of his Perfect Nutrition Comes From Government perspective.

[wendy1946]

Basic rule #1 of nutrition: If the kid (or the cat, same thing) won’t or can’t eat it, the sum total nutritional value is ZERO.....

[Stoat]

When I was young, back in the day, this guy would have stoned to death by pi**** off British citizens. Now they merely shrug or simply take it with a "what can you do" attitude.

It seems that it may not so very different in that respect here in the USA, although the cancer of Socialism has perhaps not advanced quite so far here as it has for our dear beleaguered friends Across the Pond.  In better times, my home state of Washington would never have tolerated such flagrant, hard-Left moonbats as Patty "Osama built nice roads" Murray, "Baghdad Jim" McDermott and a host of others who are not quite so internationally infamous. 

Fifty years ago, would such a frighteningly large swath of Americans have even given the time of day to a completely inexperienced and openly racist Marxist, much less enthusiastically deify him and push him down our throats as a Presidential contender, as is happening today?  I think not.

We must keep pushing back or they will be doing this here in the US also. Our schools are already like indoctrination centers in some ways and we need to fight to get the feds out of government and to wrest back control of school from the state socialists that run them.

Thankfully, homeschooling and other opt-out options are available for most Americans and so many are saving their children from this metastasizing cancer, but I haven't heard of similar opportunities for our British Friends other than breathtakingly expensive private schools.

When I was young, back in the day, this guy would have stoned to death by pi**** off British citizens. Now they merely shrug or simply take it with a "what can you do" attitude.

It seems that it may not so very different in that respect here in the USA, although the cancer of Socialism has perhaps not advanced quite so far here as it has for our dear beleaguered friends Across the Pond.  In better times, my home state of Washington would never have tolerated such flagrant, hard-Left moonbats as Patty "Osama built nice roads" Murray, "Baghdad Jim" McDermott and a host of others who are not quite so internationally infamous. 

Fifty years ago, would such a frighteningly large swath of Americans have even given the time of day to a completely inexperienced and openly racist Marxist, much less enthusiastically deify him and push him down our throats as a Presidential contender, as is happening today?  I think not.

We must keep pushing back or they will be doing this here in the US also. Our schools are already like indoctrination centers in some ways and we need to fight to get the feds out of government and to wrest back control of school from the state socialists that run them.