To think that Jamie Oliver is right...

[Easywriter]

Shoot me down should you care to but I don't want my children to eat rubbish.

I'm not obsessed by my childrens diet but I want them to eat fresh, wholesome, nutritious food in the correct quantities.

The Government should stand behind Jamie Oliver in his quest to ensure that school meals are of a decent standard.

For some children it may be the only decent meal they eat in a day, for others it will be continuing what is standard in their homes.

If mothers want to feed their children hamburgers through school railings then they deserve to be preached to about healthy eating to within an inch of their lives. Being stupid yourself is no reason to justify letting your stupidity affect your child (I mean the hamburger mothers).

It's not cool to simply disagree with everything the previous Government (as a means to signify a new regime or as a cost cutting exercise) did and surely to give school children good meals is a no-brainer.

Just do it simpleton co-elition!
Surely I'm right!

anyway, with the exercise thing, again it's not about putting all the onus on schools, not for most people anyway - but similar to the fact that there are loads of families who just can't/don't provide any nutritious food for their kids, there are also loads whose kids don't run around after school either, and spend breaktime sitting around instead of playing. It's not necessarily the same kids either - the whole 'cotton wool kids' generation etc etc, kids are stuck indoors on the X-box.

agree there are way more opportunities for kids with sports clubs and so on - a lot of it free or really cheap - but not every family uses it

sorry I don't really know what my point is... I suppose that even though much of this healthy living drive is preaching to the converted, it's worth hoping that it'll change some people's lives at least

'School finishes at 3 o'clock, half past maybe, and then kids can run about and do whatever they want, possibly encouragED BY parents.

In the school day it is true though

and the majority of the kids (not mine as it happens) go on to ater school facillities with no outdoor space.

Grab them at six. Make dinner, wash, homework.... day ios over.

At mys chool wehad a break at 10.115, 2 and 70 minutes for lunch; these days it's a 35 minute lunchbreak including eating.

And I honestly think that, combined with the demise of the ealk tos chool, is a big issue.

Not for us: we live 457 steps from school (I counted!) and my boys are on the skinny side (the odler ones anyhow, those at school) but it does seem clear that kids get less exercise. When I was a child Satiurday menat off on biles around the fields and quiet lanes. The fields were amde into esattes long ago and the lanes are clogged with cars. the aprks are crawling with glass and swings wrecked...... and that's in a decent viillage. Back home they found a gun in the kiddies park and the police delayede retrieving it due to over work.

However we don;t have the lunchbox police and rules- for us it is no glass, no fizzy, try to be sensible.

We do have the breaktime police and I suspect many from SN will remember having to threaten the old school (DS3 now in an SNU) with disability discrimination proceedings as they banned anything other than water and ASD ds3 simply spits out water so was going without a drink all morning on hot days as they were confiscating (and he was non verbal then so we couldn't know). Other children were ebing refused the water brought in becuase it was in a fruit shoot bottle with the labels taken off for ease and apprently that gave a bad message.

Not sure what point there is- except that even in schools outside England (we're Wales) wher JO stuff isn;t obligatory the silly rules can exist anyway.

lol at 457 steps

do kids really have that short a lunch break then? I'm sure we had an hour or so in the 1990s. 35 mins, that's awful.

They do where we are, I've tried bringing them home for lunch and can't manage it even from here (so claose I can hear the kids at playtime).

No idea about other places mind.

They get 15 minutes to eat; rest is play time.

OMG I can't even eat a sandwich in 15 mins!

I know but in fairness estyn (like ofsted) did complain about it too so presumably not standard

One thing my DSD's junior school tried (I don't think they carried on with it sadly) that I've noted in case I'm a primary teacher one day, is the 'wake-up shake-up' where they do a little fun gentle exercise routine first thing in the morning to wake up body and mind.

If the lunch break is only 35 mins then school must finish really early or start later.

It is up to parents to get their kids to walk to school where possible and to get them outside playing after school or along to the leisure centre. And it is up to parents and councils to make sure that after school facilities have run around space.

It should not be up to school to make sure children get plenty exercise to make up for the fact they sit on their backsides when not on school premises.

it shouldn't be, no. same as it shouldn't be up to the school to provide the one decent meal a day. in an ideal world all parents would take all these responsibilities seriously or at least make a vague effort.

but an ideal world this is not.

J.O. ROCKS.

He has tried his hardest to make things better.

The world is screwed up now with what we put in our mouths and he has done his best to make things better for our kids.

We are fools if we ignore his call to arms.

I am aware of that maths. But the answer isn't to allow schools to soak up all teh responsibility for trying to cure society's problems.

It is not unfeasible that at some point in the future schools will spend more time 'teaching' pshe and exercise than teaching numeracy and literacy.

too true... that is definitely possible!
thing is they need to strike a balance between genuine change for future generations and just straightforward help for those who need it right now. for some kids there is no option but to just help them in the easiest way as it's too late for their families to change.

YANBU I want my children to eat a proper meal at school. I dont want them being given crap that will damage their health.

The way this government is talking sounds like they want decent food to become 'only for the rich' who can afford private school.

How did we end up with such idiots running the country??? Gah!

Hurray for Jamie Oliver, he is so right. We need more people like him, willing to take on the gov for the good of the country.

I was interested to see in our local school posters all over the place talking about sourcing food locally, but when I investigated further, found this meant they bought it from massive local East Anglian processed food factories. For example frozen sausages that were 44% meat.

Duh, I don't think that was the point, guys ...

it doesn't need JO does it though?
it needs the gov to ban trans fats and to force levels of salt and fat to be cut.
I read the other day that40,000 lives would be saved a year if salt/fat in food was cut.
the Uk is ahead of the game on voluntary reductions in salt butso many times I buy food/eat out and it is so salty I can't eat it.

I've even taken mince pies back to Tesco because they were too salty!!

However I do think whilst feeling passionaltely about school food JO probably had his mind on the profit margin, after all I feel passionately that school food needs improving

Our school tries to make school dinners compulsory but we have packed lunches tbh my standards have slipped recently because of personal stuff but what I give them is still way better.

Don't do shipped in, grey, slush, can't stand the idea of a sectioned plate like a baby, don't like 'choice' (one dc has food issues so would eat nothing) why can't it be spag bol with hidden veg etc etc

oh and they should never have been allowed to sell school playing fields what a fantastic public resource gone to waste

Here in the US we've got "food deserts" (inner cities mostly) where people literally have to travel miles to get a fresh piece of fruit. One woman was quoted as saying "I could get a gun ten times faster than I could get a tomato." So the kids fill up on processed shit food and soda, are hungry and can't concentrate, get ill ten times more frequently and miss school, get diabetes in their 20's...

I'm all for a "nanny state" if it gives those kids just one meal a day that's got something fresh in it.

Its not jamie olivers fault that less children are eating school dinners now. "Which are supposedly more healthy" (Think it depends on what area you live in myself) but the parents fault who has not started their children from babies on healthy food. If all chilren ate healthy home cooked food from being weaned they would choose that at school too, if they have been raised on nuggets and burgers from 6 months no wonder they dont like the health school dinner option.

I think what Jamie Oliver tried to do with school dinners was great, how can anyone argue that giving children healthier food is a bad thing? But if it's not working then it does need to be addressed, I know it still needs to be at our local school.

Which leads me on to wanting to defend those of us who give our children packed lunch. Too often I see on here and in the media this idea that those of us who give packed lunch are ignorant and only stuff them with crap.

When ds switched to school dinners last year, all he was eating was sausages, pizza and bloody sponge and custard most days, in a primary school. These healthier dinners are definitely not happening in my area. The menu given out and stuck on the office window bore little relation to what ds was telling me they were having.

It was a disgrace, so he has packed lunches again, which I don't fill with rubbish. I always cook a good dinner in the evenings for the whole family, and the rest of our family doesn't usually eat two hot dinners a day (unless lunch is soup or a jacket potato) so why does a child need to in our instance?

Websticks - "If all chilren ate healthy home cooked food from being weaned they would choose that at school too,"

Not always. My eldest ate a wide variety of foods until he was around 4yo when he decided he didn't like the taste of certain foods, then he didn't like the look of certain foods and became very fussy despite all our best efforts. He was on school dinners but gave most of his dinner to the child next to him or wouldn't eat it at all if there was a food on his plate that he was averse to (baked beans being the main offender). Eventually the dinner staff advised us to take him off school meals as we were wasting our money and he wasn't eating enough. We persevered a while longer but in the end he took packed lunches.
He was a fussy, picky eater for the next few years until at around 15yo he began to 'fancy' trying different foods. This slowly progressed until at some point his diet became more varied. Now at the age of 23y there isn't much that he doesn't like or wouldn't eat. He ia also a very fit, healthy young man who doesn't appear to have been adversely affected by his somewhat limited early diet.

Ds wasn't overly keen on chocolate either (still isn't) but he would eat chicken nuggets (which is what websticks mentioned).

"If the lunch break is only 35 mins then school must finish really early or start later."
The actual break is longer in ours : from 12.00 to 13.10 but because there are two services, one for infants, one for juniors, the actual time to eat is often even less than 30 mins.

I really wish I lived close to the school because I would just take the |dcs out for lunch at home.

Mine are on packed lunch, and the biggest problem is not to find something healthy to put in , it is to find something healthy that my Dcs can eat without being made fun off and believe me it is a real challenge. Anything that is not a jam sandwich or a ham sandwich (do not give jam sandwich because to me jam is a breakfast thing and do not do pork) is being laughed at when the friends are nice and totally nastily mocked when they are less friendly. DD1 and DS2 were strong enough to take it and answer things like " you are not eating it so why do you care?" For DS3 though, he desperately wants to be EXACTLY like the others he sometimes does not eat anything in school and then devours the content of his lunch box as soon as we pass the gate.

I find it . It is not food with stong smell or anything (learnt my lesson very early about those) , just different and for him hearing comments like "avocado? YUCK!" or "HUGH spinach!" Is too much to take. I have compromised a lot WRT what I would want to put in it and what I actually "allow" myself to but I do not want him to be ashamed of the perfectly reasonable food he gets and am hoping his confidence grows a bit. I am in two minds about having a chat with school as I suppose it might be normal table occurence to complain about others food in a "my lunch is better than yours, yours is yuck!" type of way? Or do you think I should say something?