Jamies School Dinners

[snaffler]

OK I dont have kids (at the moment), and Jamie Oliver is a bog standard Chef with a few TV shows but after watching this the guy does show some spirit in wanting to change the s**t UK schools feed kids, and it is S**t.

But the problem is the kids said "we get home and we end up eating chips as well" I think the problem with is the amount of crap that is on sale as cheap easy ready meals,....smiley faces, fishy feet and other endless amounts of crap.

By the end of the show he was trying his best to shame the Government into doing something about this, and they should.....37p a head that is bad, no wonder those kids are living off crap at school.

What amazed me, and as he said on the show "why cant I use a little pure sea salt when I cook these foods yet the processed boxed deep froze crap the kids get every day has endless E numbers and additives......" in a nut shell school dinners have more Es than a rave.

If I ever have children I swear I will always send them to school with packed lunches, this I figure will enable them to live above the age of 40 and not become obese or ill on sugar,salt,hydro fats and Es.

[Aurora]

I work at college and all the students want to eat there are burgers, chips and pizza. The vegetarians have chips and cheese, or chip and beans and the rest eat .........as Jamie put it so delicately scrotum burgers! The healthiest meal there is jacket potatoes but even those have been cooked to an inch of their lives, all shrivelled or burnt. Even the drinks come out of a vending machine, full of sugar and additives.

And my co workers wonder why I take hummus and carrots to work with me!

Good on him.........I hope it makes someone sit up and notice!

[Poison Ivy]

Do NOT get me started on School Dinners. My daughter is at infant school and the have a 'family' menu which is everyone has the same meal, there are no choices available. They never have a vegetarian option never mind a vegan one. I told her just to eat the vegetables as I was aware of the headmistresses views on the school meals (she does not tolerate faddy diets and everyone will have the same, regardless).

However as time went on and my daughter was coming home every day with stomachace/diarrhoea it became apparent that the Dinner Ladies were making her eat the meat dish too. I volunteered to cover absence on the dinner's and got to do a couple of days as a Dinner Lady. I was told to make sure that each child had something of every dish on their plate and to 'encourage' them to eat it even if they said they didn't like it. Needless to say, this was like a red rag to a bull to me so I ignored this order, if a child said they didn't like what was offered I didn't give them any and gave them a bit extra of something they did like.

I also got to see the quality of the food, it was soggy overcooked vegetables, grey lumpy mashed potates, and some kind of meat dish - all made a day in advance and re-heated the next day.

Having seen all this I decided to get in touch with the person who organise the borough's school meal service, he responded that anyone who asks for a vegetarian meal should be provided with one, he got in touch with the headmistress at my daughter's school and she agreed to provide a vegetarian meal every day for my daughter. Has she ever had one - NO - I am fighting a losing battle, so at the moment she is eating her vegetables and potatoes as before. I would give her a packed lunch but am torn between giving her decent food and her not being singled out for being 'weird'.

Other than this farce with her meal the school is excellent, the teaching staff are brilliant and for the most part so are the other kids there.

What can you do??

[Tigerlily]

That's horrible of the headmistress not to give her at least a vegetarian option.

Personally, when I have kids I'm going to make it 100% clear that NO ANIMAL products what so ever get into her/his mouth. I'll give them packed lunches...over here, only students in junior high and high school (ages 12-17) are allowed to buy lunch at school in a cafeteria. The younger students at elementary school have theme days like "Pizza Day" and "Hot Dog Day"....*gag* Fortunely, you don't have to buy any of those meals.

[cedarblue]

i watched it - gah! 37p - for TWO courses!!!

it was interesting to see jamie at a real loss having to cater with a budget in mind instead of just cooking a meal and then breaking it down to see what to charge customers.

yesterday afternoon on 5 live, there was a prog about the programme, the council guy basically said that the council always take up the cheapest option within the budget guideline they have set - despite what c**p may be in the food (well he didnt actually say THAT, but anyone with an ounce of sense could have read between the lines.)

i would gladly pay good money daily if it meant my child was getting:

a) quality, nutritional food, meaningfully prepared and cooked (not to within an inch of its life)

b) choice of veggie/vegan dishes

cripes! vegan dishes should be even cheaper to cook as there's no meat or fish to cost for!! - er...HELLO EDUCATION DEPT !

most days there is a veggi option at our school, but occasionally they put a fish dish in as the 'option'....*sigh*


i am looking forward to the rest of the series...

p.s. anyone spot the 'turkey twizzlers'??? UGH!

[Tofu Monster]

ordinarily jamie oliver annoys the tits off me with all his dumb sainsburys adverts on the goggle box, and tv chefs in general do frustrate me at the best of times for obvious reasons, but i did watch that programme and i did find myself supporting what he was trying to do and rooting for him to succeed. i think it was unecessary to pair him up with that contrary loud-mouthed irish woman just to make 'better' tv though.

yes, it was quite shocking to see how oblivious all the kids are to the crap they're putting in their mouths but i think it's largely the fault of the parents not educating them (and themselves!) better at home.

seems that nowadays preparing food is an 'incovenience' that has to be got out of the way as soons as possible, lest god forbid you might miss coronation street or something. but that's not the way it should be. eating is the fundamental way in which we keep our bodies healthy and yet nobody give a shit about what rubbish they are eating or how much suffering it caused along the way, as long as it's quick, easy and tastes nice. rant rant.

[mattd]

Well you guys aren't alone. The US feeds it's student the lowest grade food legally allowed. If Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (I may have the spelling wrong) is available there, I'd highly recommend it. It's definitly not an animal rights book, but it's a great work on the problems in the fast food industry in terms of human rights, customer health, and corporations not giving a damn. the best section in the book, IMO, is the one that talks about what schools feed kids. i'm sure it's pretty applicable in the UK as well.

[kriz]

I went to elementary school in Sweden and I was provided with delicious nutritious vegetarian meals everyday throughout my scool years. And this was in the seventies! Looking back, I think I was a very privileged girl.

[mattd]

both my girlfriend and i work in the public school system and are extremely disgusted with what they feed students these days. so her dream is to some day be able to open up a monisory(sp?) school where part of the curriculum will have the kids growing fresh veggies in the garden that will used for school meals. i think it's an awesome idea and i hope we're able to do it someday.

[cedarblue]

i read fast food nation, mattd, really enjoyed it.

let my daughter watch the jamie oliver show, i taped it for her. although there was lots of effing and blinding in it i figured i would rather let her see the show with the rubbish food content and what he was trying to do with providing nutritious lunches than worry about a bit of swearing - she is not the kind of kid to start effing in her speech just because of that show. (she did laugh at jamie making tomato bread and then putting two apples at the end of it and it resembled a gents bits!! )

after watching it, she informs me that she doesnt want school dins any more but that i need to give her 'interesting' packed lunches. we spoke about what ideas she has and she came up with feta cheese & salad, soup in a flask, tofutti cheese in pittas, tofu cubes, cheese & lemon sandwiches, marmite sandwiches, fruit salad. (she is veggie not vegan)

i figured letting her input into her lunches will make her eat them up (she used to come home with sometimes none of it touched), she has also decided not to have crisps in there, a spacebar (bit like fruit leather) instead.

she was shocked that the kids at the beginning of the show didnt know what a courgette (zuchini) or head of celery was!! good girl

she cant wait for next weeks show - apparently he's up in county durham.


p.s. that'll be montisory, mattd

[cedarblue]

there are two articles in the daily mail on line about jaimie today, i tried to post links but they didnt work, one about him doing a dinner for 50p and another about the possible state of his marriage.

[Wildflower]

Can someone tell me what E's are?

I am in the states and we get a few Jaime Oliver shows here. I will have to see if we get this one on BBC America. I think I might remember an ad some time back but I thought he was teaching the kids how to cook. I have watched "Naked Chef" and another kinda Naked Chef series where he was in a very posh appartment cooking.

As a child I always brought a lunch, there were very few things I would eat at school. In high school they were not allowed to sell chips/soda/candy in the cafeteria, so they sold it at a snack bar outside of it. We did have fries in the cafeteria, but we had a salad bar and that was what i always got. salad. (i was veggie then). We were allowed to leave for lunch, so sometimes we went out for fast food (i never like fast food) or back to a friends house to make frozen pizza or mac and cheese.

Many of the high schools now have McDonalds and Taco Bells in the cafaterias. The other HS in my town had this. I grew up not far from the school featured in Supersize Me where the children were eating crap in Naperville, Illinois.

Now I live not far from the school in Appleton, Wisconsin where Natural Ovens came in and started giving them fresh veggies/fruits, non packaged meals and whole grains and the schools behavioural problems dropped to zero. That is just amazing.

[Kiva Dancer]

Es would be E numbers. Instead of listing chemical names in the ingredients as is done in US, E numbers are listed on packages of processed food.

This tells the breakdown of the E numbers with a list of what the actual E numbers mean.

[Trendygirl]

When's it on? I lived in Durham until I was 21. I don't have a tv but I would like to watch it but I need to plan in advance.

[cedarblue]

wednesday nights, ch4, 9pm. there are three more shows to go.

[Gorilla]

my mum works as a dinner lady at a primary school and she's constantly amazed at how many children don't know how to use a knife and fork because they're so used to eating junk food out of a box. apparently when they do get fresh fruit with their meals loads of them don't even recognise the fruit and don't know how to eat it, or they say they don't like it before they've eaten it because it doesn't come in a packet.

the head cook insists that all the food is made the day it's eaten from basic ingredients but it's still mostly stodge and not veggie-friendly - she thinks fish is an acceptable veggie option

[feline01]

I never thought about that but you're right Gorilla, with the convenience crap that kids eat these days, they probably wouldn't know how to eat alot of basic fruits and veg. Here in the US, they even have applesauce, yogurt and peanut butter in squeeze tubes so kids can squirt it right into their mouths. And don't get me going on velcro, kids don't know how to tie shoelaces anymore!

[Aurora]

A friend sent me this link this morning on school dinners.

Here

Thought it might be interesting

Aurora

[phillip888]

Has anyone here seen 'supersize me'? There's one bit about junk food and school lunch. Apparently the USDA has such a hold on school lunches that they are literally crap. For those that don't know the USDA is a government funded department created by the republican party to sell the goods of their largest industry backer. They're involved in everything, includig school lunch, and they're funded by tax dollars. Sad stuff.

[feline01]

I've seen it, the stuff that is given to kids in public schools in the US are items that aren't fit to be sold commercially. Kids have the choice of eating that garbage or the "lucky" ones go to schools who have signed up for sponsorships with the fast food industry so the cafetaria sells KFC, McMurder, Murder King, Pizza Smut etc.

One of the oh-so-many reasons why we will be home-schooling.

[coney]

apparently when they do get fresh fruit with their meals loads of them don't even recognise the fruit and don't know how to eat it, or they say they don't like it before they've eaten it because it doesn't come in a packet.

I hate how much kids are filled with garbage nowadays. In the States, there are families that only eat potato chips out of a bag, Doritos, McDonalds, and ice cream. I can't stand the amout of grease, sugar, and meat people eat over here. Don't they know they're killing themselves off early by eating that way? Sheesh.

Good for that cook to demand something be done about school lunches. Watch Supersize Me if you haven't already, there's a good bit about lunch programs in it.

[Jobey]

I didnt see the program but I have read a few bits about school dinners in books and that. One of the stupidest things about it is that decent food makes learning easier. In my experience, if you're full of really unnutritious food you're going to feel down, not take in info very well, have trouble concentrating etc etc
Obviously this is speculation but I reckon spending a bit extra on decent food for the kids would give an overall improvement in grades at the school. They shouldnt be so damn shortsited

[Green_Faery]

My school's lunches are really horrible. I was trying for a while to get them to serve vegan lunches, but eventually I gave up and I just pack my own lunches. it's so disgusting... they have an ice cream machine, they have one of those "milk" machines (that have flavored milk with more sugar than soda has) their "salads" have chicken in them and don't even bother trying to check ingredients! I have a friend who got food poisoning from the school lunches and my brother has gotten sour milk on more than one occasion. the only thing I can actually eat at school it pretzels from the snack machines so when I forget lunch, I'm out of luck. (now I bring hummus and tofu wraps, homemade burritos, home made bread, organic apple sauce, mushroom and tomato pitas... yum!) I still need to get a thermos so I can bring tea or soymilk to school. (I can't bring myself to use juice boxes; so wasteful.)

[Jobey]

I managed to watch the episodes I missed and the most recent one on wednesday. Its great (scary) tv and I have a new found respect for Jamie for trying to change things. You can see how much hard work he's putting in on top of his job and family commitments and seeing him win over those last few kids who wouldnt try his meals was fantastic! At "dinner lady camp" some of the dinner ladies were as bad as the kids tho

[PinkFluffyCloud]

Once I had one of my son's friends round and when he saw the fruit in the fruit bowl he asked if it was 'real'???? He couldn't believe it when I said he could choose any fruit he liked! How sad!

[Mystic]

My school's lunches are really horrible. I was trying for a while to get them to serve vegan lunches, but eventually I gave up and I just pack my own lunches. it's so disgusting... they have an ice cream machine, they have one of those "milk" machines (that have flavored milk with more sugar than soda has) their "salads" have chicken in them and don't even bother trying to check ingredients! I have a friend who got food poisoning from the school lunches and my brother has gotten sour milk on more than one occasion. the only thing I can actually eat at school it pretzels from the snack machines so when I forget lunch, I'm out of luck. (now I bring hummus and tofu wraps, homemade burritos, home made bread, organic apple sauce, mushroom and tomato pitas... yum!) I still need to get a thermos so I can bring tea or soymilk to school. (I can't bring myself to use juice boxes; so wasteful.)

Green Faery, you are so knowledgable for your age! When I was 17 (I was just vegetarian), I lived on chocolate, strawberry milk, kraft peanut butter sandwiches on white bread, spinach and ricotta filo pastries, vegetable pasties and crisps. Now, to uni I take avocado and tomato or hummus or tahini sandwiches (on wholewheat bread), chopped up raw veggies like carrots, capsicum or cucumber, fresh fruit and dried fruit. I get bored sometimes but at least it is healthy.

[Gorilla]

my local newspaper had an article about school dinners, giving a couple of samples from a typical menu. these kids are getting things called 'Turkey Twizzlers' from Bernard Matthews, 'Fish Rockets', or a vegan option called Monster Feet - i was a little surprised to see that they even provide vegan processed food, but it's hardly healthy - rehydrated potato flake, soy isolate, hydrolised vegetable protein, E numbers. children can't eat that sort of thing every day.

[Mystic]

Oh gee that sounds just delicious. I wish I could have monster feet

[feline01]

Check out the Professor F. Rankfurter's link.

http://www.channel4.com/life/microsi...owl/index.html


Andi

Professor Frankfurter ?

[cedarblue]

i read fast food nation, mattd, really enjoyed it.

let my daughter watch the jamie oliver show, i taped it for her. although there was lots of effing and blinding in it i figured i would rather let her see the show with the rubbish food content and what he was trying to do with providing nutritious lunches than worry about a bit of swearing - she is not the kind of kid to start effing in her speech just because of that show. (she did laugh at jamie making tomato bread and then putting two apples at the end of it and it resembled a gents bits!! )

after watching it, she informs me that she doesnt want school dins any more but that i need to give her 'interesting' packed lunches. we spoke about what ideas she has and she came up with feta cheese & salad, soup in a flask, tofutti cheese in pittas, tofu cubes, cheese & lemon sandwiches, marmite sandwiches, fruit salad. (she is veggie not vegan)

i figured letting her input into her lunches will make her eat them up (she used to come home with sometimes none of it touched), she has also decided not to have crisps in there, a spacebar (bit like fruit leather) instead.

she was shocked that the kids at the beginning of the show didnt know what a courgette (zuchini) or head of celery was!! good girl

she cant wait for next weeks show - apparently he's up in county durham.


p.s. that'll be montisory, mattd

update:...daughter is enjoying her lunches, soup in flask with french bread, tofu & feta with coleslaw, pasta salad etc and each day either homemade flapjack or yoghurt raisins, a fruit leather, some fresh fruit eg pineapple, melon, grapes, satsuma and flask of juice.

she had the friday 'fun lunch' last week and said the pizza was horrid - not so fun then!

[mattd]

Has anyone here seen 'supersize me'? There's one bit about junk food and school lunch. Apparently the USDA has such a hold on school lunches that they are literally crap. For those that don't know the USDA is a government funded department created by the republican party to sell the goods of their largest industry backer. They're involved in everything, includig school lunch, and they're funded by tax dollars. Sad stuff.

Well it does stand for United States Department of Agriculture. So I would expect it to be paid for by tax dollars. The USDA does indeed have horrible standards for whats acceptable to feed school children, but I wouldn't rush to blame it on the Republican Party. And it's not really the USDA that has the hold on school lunches, its corportate agriculture and animal farming that has the hold. These companies do have alot of power over the USDA, so are able to keep poisoning kids with that food. On top of that, you have schools that are vastly underfunded, so soft drink and junkfood companies (and more and more now your seeing fast food companies) make deals with the schools that if they put in their companies vending machines in their schools, then the schools get a certain amount of the money from the machines.

[cedarblue]

looking forward to this weeks final episode where it looks like jamie is chatting with a council official and is asking the official which he would rather see kids eating, a plate of freshly cooked food or a plate with a twizzler, a footie foot and bit of something else on....hmmm wonder what he will choose??

[Jobey]

Last episode in 20 mins

[Kevster]

'Blair acts on Jamie's plan for schools

Gaby Hinsliff and Amelia Hill
Sunday March 20, 2005
The Observer

Tony Blair is to bow to the increasing clamour from parents for better school meals for their children and announce a series of plans to swap junk food for 'organic and local' fresh meals.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/polit...441940,00.html

[cedarblue]

looking forward to this weeks final episode where it looks like jamie is chatting with a council official and is asking the official which he would rather see kids eating, a plate of freshly cooked food or a plate with a twizzler, a footie foot and bit of something else on....hmmm wonder what he will choose??

well it was encouraging to see the minister agree about the quality of school meals and that he would be encouraging the move to improve the quality of dinners and replace junk - just a shame that he was shuffled from his post and replaced by a lady who had no plans to shelve the junk food choice in schools.


interesting guardian article, kev

lets hope the govt can follow through - or if they are voted out of office that a subsequent govt will continue positive changes.

[gertvegan]

Theres a good article in the latest Vegetarian & Vegan Foundation mag by Tony Wardle.

As well as the mentioning Jamie Oliver, it talks about the collapse in child nutrition at schools being down to the privatisation and contracting of school meals to the lowest bidders. It also talks about how some companies that produce damaging foods have infiltrated schools and influence the curriculum.

Berbatd Matthews with his turkey twizzlers uses zone crazy promotional packages and science zone ideas to keep the bm name in front of kids.

And fat ronalds is involved in teacher development and support, placing 300 teachers in their restaurants per year to learn experience and develop case studies to take back to school. They produce materials for a level, and thousands of students do work experience with them. They even produce a cd rom to be used in maths and science classes.

It also talks about the meat and livestock commission who help devise the food technology curriculum.

[Poison Ivy]

Yep, been looking at the Meat and Livestock Commissions website tonight and all the 'educational' bumph that they give free of charge

A few weeks ago I saw the whiteboard thing in one of the classrooms in the year above the one my daughter is in. It was covered in the traditional food pyramid, and the 'healthy' food choices that the children should be making i.e meat and dairy - I was furious, I felt like marching in and telling the teacher what a load of rubbish they were teaching these 6 year olds, but given that my daughter wasn't in there I didn't think it would be a terribly good idea

Rest assured that if they repeat this 'lesson' in 'healthy food choices' next year I will make my feelings on the inappropriateness of it quite clear!!!(A troublesome, bolshy parent, moi!! Never )

[cedarblue]

'Blair acts on Jamie's plan for schools

Gaby Hinsliff and Amelia Hill
Sunday March 20, 2005
The Observer

Tony Blair is to bow to the increasing clamour from parents for better school meals for their children and announce a series of plans to swap junk food for 'organic and local' fresh meals.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/polit...441940,00.html

daughter has 'friday fun lunches' at school, anything from pizza to chips etc.
i asked her yesterday what she had for fun lunch and she mumbled 'pizza'. i asked was it nice, she mumbled 'ok but i thought jamie oliver had spoken to mr blair to make the dinners better?'

kids are brilliant, if mr blair agreed to improve the dinners why hasnt it happened already - kind-of-thing???

if only change were that quick!!

[Kevster]

Perhaps it is easier to make things worse than it is to make things better...

[cedarblue]

more jamie prog info here

[cedarblue]

Perhaps it is easier to make things worse than it is to make things better...

you said it!