Tuesday, 4 September 2007

Kids avoiding healthy School meals

The Fib Lib-Dems are saying the number of pupils eating school meals has dropped by 428,000 in the last two years and they are concerned.

They are complaining that that the healthy eating campaign has put kids off eating school dinners and are demanding Nu-Lab take fresh action to stop pupils stuffing themselves on fatty food until they explode.

When I was at school many of us would have happily gone hungry, rather than eat the school meals on offer, ‘School Dinners’, as they were known.

Unfortunately we did not have that option. We had little old ladies who had apparently been unable to secure posts as women prison guards, on the grounds that they were just too scary.

They had a gimlet eye and the infallible ability to detect untruth. They would not let us out of the dining hall until they were satisfied that we had eaten ‘enough’.

Perhaps David Laws, their schools spokesman, should suggest recruiting some scary old ladies, (preferably the kids own grannies) instead of complaining about ‘meltdowns’ and 'balls ups’. This lot would probably need ninja training first, as they did not go through ‘the war’.

Still he probably does have a point. Anything the Government has a hand in these days is bound to be a cock up of some sort, even something simple. As he said: “This is a classic example of a Government policy”

Trying to persuade a bunch of finicky kids to eat something decent, who have never seen ‘real’ food and whose parents’ culinary skills are limited to microwaving the virtually unidentifiable contents of a ‘value pack’ was never going to be easy.

2 comments:

fake consultant said...

we have similar issues in the us with the school lunch program...something i've become more aware of as i've been pursuing a series of school lunch stories at my own blog.

CFD Ed said...

Re: ”we have similar issues in the us with the school lunch program...”

It seems likely that certain children have problems with ‘healthy’ meals/foods because they are unfamiliar with those particular meals and food types.

Very young children will sample almost anything. Slightly older children, especially if they have not become used to a variety of tastes and textures, can be quite conservative when it comes to trying new foods.

It takes more than just putting unfamiliar ‘healthy’ food in front of them. It takes persuasion and education.