Food, glorious food

The Boy and I watched some of the recent TV series by Jamie Oliver and we were both aghast at the vile muck that these poor children were being served for their school dinner. The more we watched the more we were horrified at what was revealed. In ‘the olden days’, at my schools anyway, the dinners were cooked on the premises and served at tables seating about 14 children. There was a teacher, prefect or monitor at the head of the table, who served the meal in either regular or small (if it was something you disliked) portions onto china plates which were then passed down the table until everyone was served. Vegetables were in large dishes on the table and people helped themselves to those. To drink there were large jugs of water. When all the people on the table had eaten their main course the plates were collected and taken back to the kitchen, and the pudding collected. Again, this was served out at the table. There was no choice of menu – we did have one diabetic girl at school who was supplied with an alternative pudding if what regular one was unsuitable, but vegetarianism was almost unheard of – very hippy, and no allowance was made for whims. There was also a ‘top table’ where the rest of the staff ate. And yes, they ate exactly the same meal as the children.

Which is why I was so appalled at the state of modern school dinners. Nutritionally unbalanced portions of junk food are splodged onto plastic airline-style ‘plates’, main course and pudding at the same time, so by the time a child has finished their main course the pudding’s gone cold. But what a vile-looking main course! There seems to be a choice of deep-fried mechanically recovered reformed animal by-product and chips, or pizza and chips, with cans of pop to drink. Table manners have gone out of the window, with children eating with their fingers.

So Jamie Oliver decided to see what he could do to change this. Do you know, lots of these London children didn’t recognise what vegetables they were being shown? One thought rhubarb was an onion; another that a leek was a potato. They haven’t a clue – because their mothers don’t cook properly either. One mother admitted her child’s evening meal was a packet of crisps, a Kitkat and a can of Coke. So junk at home as well. A doctor from the local hospital was interviewed and said that they often have children brought in with severe constipation because they eat so little fibre. Some haven’t had a poo for six weeks; and when they puke their vomit contains faecal matter, they’re so bunged up. It’s reckoned that these children have a shorter life expectancy than their parents – the first reversal of the steady improvements that have been made over the centuries.

It was an uphill struggle for Jamie. The dinner ladies didn’t know how to cook, and they didn’t have proper equipment anyway, because education authority policy had dictated that meals should be centrally cooked, transported to schools and merely reheated on the premises. Many of the children were too afraid to even taste the food which was prepared because they’d never seen anything as exotic as spaghetti bolognaise or mild chicken curry with rice. One small boy was too scared to sample a fresh strawberry.

But they took the bull by the horns, banned the junk food entirely and struggled on for a month, all the while fighting not only the children's horror but also the education authority's refusal to pay the dinner ladies any overtime for the extra hours they were putting in. However, after the month was up, the teachers had noticed a marked improvement in the children's behaviour, especially their concentration after lunch, and, even more tellingly, the school nurse said that none of the asthmatic children need to use their inhalers any more ...

I could go on and on and on, because I was so shocked and appalled at what I saw on that TV series. They say ‘you are what you eat’. I do hope not, because that’s writing off a whole generation as being junk. And this is the generation that will be earning the money to pay our pensions, and the people that will be looking after us oldies when we’re decrepit; some of them will be making our laws. Selfishly I’d like to think they were healthy and strong enough to do this. It's not often I feel strongly enough about a subject to sign a petition, but I do about this one. Please, back this campaign. Your children's health is at stake.