Posted on 07/09/2009 6:21:11 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Jamie Oliver reforms see pupils reject school food Nicola Woolcock
The number of children having school meals has stalled after the increase in nutritional standards pioneered by Jamie Oliver, official figures show today.
Only a third of secondary age pupils eating a cooked lunch on the premises while the overall percentage of pupils eating school meals fell at both primary and secondary level compared with 2008.
Participation has decreased ever since the standard of food rose following Oliver’s ’School Dinners’ campaign which resulted in the banning of Turkey Twizzlers and daily helpings of chips.
The School Food Trust, a Government agency responsible for improving the quality and take-up of school meals, claimed a victory because the figures rose marginally when comparing schools that had used exactly the same method of calculation last year.
But the figures are an embarrassment for the Government, which pledged three years ago to achieve an increase of 10 percentage points in the number of children eating school meals, by this autumn - a target that has been missed whichever set of data is used.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
*shrug* If the schools are providing lunches they should be healthy lunches. If children and parents want unhealthy lunches they will provide their own - which appears to be what they are doing. Seems like the program is working.
Makem eat their peas and carrots and all that other stuff! We
didn’t have chips or fast foods in my day. Harrumph!!!!!!!
“Seems like the program is working.”
I wonder how much food is being wasted? Thrown out? We’re paying for it after all! When I was in grade school, lunch cost 35 cents. I usually brownbagged, but on really cold days, my Mom would spring for a hot lunch at school.
I see no downside.
What we eat isn't as much a consequence of culture as they imagine. Where you are dealing with countries with a long history of immigration (USA, Canada, UK, France, Iraq, Israel for example) you have a large population of barely recognizable sub-populations that have different digestive capabilities and needs.
No doubt the Food Trust makes sure that UK kiddies get plenty of "fish" in those daily lunches ~ but do they make sure that there's no breading, or that the fish are not fried, or if fried, not fried in oil used to prepare wheat-based products.
And "glub glub", do they put that out for dessert ~ and with a warning sign for the unwary to remind them "this product contains milk sugar"?
Thse are NOT cultural differences ~ they are fundamental and have powerful biological bases.
I totally agree.
Unless you live in UK, you’re not paying for it.
If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!?
Sorry. ;-)
Jaimie Oliver is a twit.
Ok, there are different cultures there, but the basic rebuttal is the same: they are entitled, and in the good old days, were obligated, to buy and prepare their own lunches. It's not the school's responsibility to prepare fifteen varieties of meat loaf on a given day, or for that matter even one.
a bad food item that is et is better than a good foor item that isn’t.
Bwaaa! You’re right! And I usually castigate people for not reading the articles!
I’m busted LOL!
When I was in school, the kids could pick between milk and chocolate milk - so duh, like 98% go chocolate. Nevermind the fact that it didn’t taste a damned bit like chocolate, more like cigarette ash brown milk, but hey! it came in a brown carton that said chocolate on it, so that’s the one!
Three times one year I opened up a carton of curdled milk because they weren’t turning it over faster than it could go bad. I do miss the hot dogs that were in some dough trough that baked up around the dog. I haven’t seen those since!
How can you compete with chippies and bacon butties?
Nom nom nom.
How can you compete with chippies and bacon butties?
Nom nom nom.
Invariable they say they are hungry, so I offer them what I eat, usually some kind of beans, broccoli or brussels sprouts and baked chicken.
I've yet for any of them to avail himself of my hospitality.
Rather they ask to be taken and fed at McDonalds.
I tell them that if they won't eat what I eat, they must not be very hungry.
Lower income earners seem to be able to afford cell phones for their kids and other techno gadgets, but when it comes to meals somehow are not to be able to feed their kids (And this is on a military base).
In fact received a pamphlet for free and reduced priced meal benefits for children courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. taxpayer as well as those who actually feel the government should stay out of the parenting business by taking the initiative to feed their kids, yesterday in the mail. Self-reliance is as dead as the dodo.
That's the second time today I saw that quote on FR.
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