Jamie Olivers rant about packed lunches.

[misdee]

LONDON (Reuters) - Jamie Oliver, the television chef famous for his crusade to improve school dinners, lashed out at parents on Thursday over the food they give to their children.

Speaking at the launch of his new TV programme, Oliver said 70 percent of packed lunches in were "disgraceful" and he would like to see them banned.

He said the decisions parents made regarding the diets of their children
were sometimes just plain wrong.
"I've spent two years being politically correct about parents but it's time to say, if you're giving your young kids fizzy drinks, you're an a*hole and a tosser," Oliver said.

"If you give them bags of crisps, you're an idiot. If you aren't cooking them a hot meal, sort it out."

Oliver said headteachers were too frightened of some parents to tell them what they should give their child to bring to school.

He was particularly critical of parents who give their children Red Bull an energy drink when they are tired, saying it was not much better than giving them a line of cocaine.

Oliver's new programme, "Jamie's Return to School Dinners", is a follow-up to his successful Channel 4 series on improving school meals.

Maybe should read article before going off alarming at nobody inparticular...

hoxty, you should mention that to Jamie Oliver, I reckon. Something should be done.

How weird- I posted that on another thread and it's turned up here, clearly with some kind of homing instinct.

Serious question, why do people get so angry about this?

Also, I find it bizarre that if aspire to eat and serve real food you're accused of trying to reach perfection, or be a perfect parent, or a foodie. There is something so wrong in our eating culture, that a preference for real food should be considered a sort of Hyancinth Bucket-like quest for one-upmanship. In a normal society, a preference for good quality real food, would be considered normal, not some kind of sneering looking down your nose point-scoring dysfunction.

I also agree with Thomcat. Not overly enamoured of Jamie but diet and nutrition is a huge issue for our country. Since a lot of LEAs jumped onto his bandwagon, uptake of school dinners has fallen even further and many school catering services are now in a very fragile situation. In an average class in our school, less than 20% have school dinners despite the best efforts of heavy marketing from the LEA. The kids prefer to continue having their packed lunches and preferred diet at home ( ie nuggets, chips etc etc. )Whilst the kids are still pliable, educationg their parents is the real task and perhaps anybody bothering to even try and do so needs a medal.
Heard a very young mum discussing a tub of Nesquick in the supermarket the other week, " This is the one with all the goodness in it!" Her child was about 6 months old....

Thanks for saying it for me FluffyCharlotte. FGS, no-one is condeming the odd paket of cisps, sweet jesue, not even JO is saying that pizza and crisps are evil fgs, he's sayign have them, but in moderation. Ohhhh I give up, i'm worn out and am off to discuss the eastenders storyline on special needs.

Second everything you've said here TC.

Its definitely not just a socio economic thing. I have educated, wealthy friends who wouldn't know one end of an aubergine from a sweet potato. They can't even make simple things like a white sauce. Their kids are eating vaguely more healthy foods than the very poor, because Waitrose don't stock as much shite food as some other supermarkets!!!
Healthy eating and cooking can be cheap, quick & easy. I'm so glad someone is banging on about the sad state of our eating habits. JO doesn't appeal to me personally, I don't particularly like his style but I am glad he is appalled by our culinary failure and the inability of so many to feed their children well. I sincerely hope things will improve.

well said bugsy.
And before anyone gets all defensive over 1 bag of crisps, can they make sure they read Willows posts, or just her very last one.
JO is talking kids with crisps, mulitple of, every day, and half eaten MacDonalds and redbull.
Those people exist. Hard as it is for us to believe, they exist.
And yes, they do need to be, metaphorically, slapped round the face and shaken, anything to make them see what they are doing.

And I have a lot more than one glass of wine a nigth, esp tonight, but it's my body, my liver, my choice. Not inflicting that choice onto my kids, not giving them wotsits and processed food as their only option. I'm offering them a balanced meal, like pretty much every other mumsnetter, but not like every other mum in the UK. And it's those mums that JO is trying to do something for and good on him for that.

dh saw a baby in a buggy swigging coke out of a bottle last year. honestly. (babe was about 1)

On holiday this summer I saw a young toddler drinking coke out of an avent bottle. I'm sure it happens alot.

only read last couple of posts as well as OP, but am with Thomcat on this.

When I was a teacher it was worrying to see so many children with lunchboxes consisting entirely of heavily processed food, day in, day out.

Bravo, Thomcat! Bravo.

Well said.

I agree 100%.

I tend to agree with what he is saying..but he is hardly likely to win over his target audience by calling them arseholes and tossers.

I'm with LadyTH - he is a knob end

Bit off the subject but I'm really struggling to understand why they stopped teaching basic cooking skills in schools. I mean isn't it a basic life skill, you know, to be able to feed yourself and future generations properly? Far more important than learning alot of the stuff they do these days
( so grumpy old woman)Maybe I've got it all wrong.

I don't know him, so I can't say he's a knob end.

I don't know him either, but I can

my sons olny 20 months, but he will be having healthy dinners at school,

he eats fresh fruit & veg everyday,

this am hes had toast, water, and a bowl of strawberries, apple, banana and graps,

i agree with jamie!

Well said Jamie !!!
It's about time the parents got an earful of the truth that nobody else is brave enough to tell them.

Processed junk combined with chocolate bars and juice drinks or fizzy drinks that really contain no fruit.
It's all quick stuff that parents just don't think about.

Manufacturers produce this rubbish and some silly parents buy into it so it won't go away.

My neighbour sends her 3 children to school (8, 10 and 12) with 3 kitkats for their lunch, each, plus a fruit shoot (which should be banned too).

My son's best friend has all the processed C**p in his lunchbox and then goes home for chicken dinosaurs and smiley faces for tea.
My husband and I went to this house for tea with the children last a while ago and to my horror along with our 'cheap as chips' pizza we were given smiley faces and fish fingers. To drink we were offered coke and lemonade. Their youngest child is 3 and was drinking coke. Mine all had water as at 6, 5 and 2 I will not allow fizzy drinks (other than Perrier at Grandmas house).

Sorry, had to rant.
I like Jamie because he not only produces cook books for adults but cares about what childen eat too.
I realise that not everyone has the time or energy to cook every night but surely there are better alternatives to this rubbish.

Dr Toddler Taming said all this first, of course, many years ago.

I don't have the exact quote, but he makes a wry comment along the lines of: "A parent tells me, 'my 2-year-old will only eat chips, chocolate and biscuits' and I think, oh, so he goes and takes rhe car keys and loads up with all this stuff at the supermarket himself, does he?"

pmsl at Jamie - not mincing his words is he? Good for him. We have a healthy lunch box policy at school but a lot of parents don;t stick to it, which means dd is constantly telling me that you are allowed crisps and chocolate because a lot of her friends do and they don;t get told off. If parents don;t adhere to a voluntary policy does make me wonder if the school ought to be a bit more hardline. they see the lunchboxes, they could at least start writing stroppy letters to the culprits.

link to "sun" article about this Interview:)

I haven't been through all the posts, but I am surprised at some of the comments here. A decent packed lunch is about neither time nor money, and while I agree that the odd packet of crisps once in a while is not disastrous - it simply isn't necessary. My kids are not into the pasta salads or hummus or any of the wonderful imaginative stuff that all these chefs propose, but they have a sandwich (egg or ham or cheese) in a wholemeal roll. They also have chopped cucumber, cherry tomatoes, a baby yoghurt (for some reason yoghurts without sugar are only made for babies), and at least one piece of fruit. If I've been baking, they'll have a flapjack or cookie or something like that as a treat, but on the understanding that they only eat this once everything else has gone.
How difficult is all that? Where's the need for the crisps? I can tell you, if I put crisps in they'd eat that and probably leave the rest - and I bet they're not the only ones.
The other thing is that my kids are at a fee-paying school, and I am really surprised at the ignorance displayed by supposedly educated (in the main) parents regarding their kids' diets. Ds2 is in pre-school and they have to take a snack every day. The school pleads with us to make it a healthy one. My ds has taken an apple every day since the term began 3 weeks ago, won't contemplate anything else. Why are people sending in packs of crisps with 4-yr-olds? If they won't eat fruit or veg, send in chunks of cheese. It's up to us to educate our children. And this cereal bar nonsense - packed with sugar. (I know some of the organic ones are not but most are).
Sorry, but there is no excuse.

my friend's next door neighbour (v posh) was talking about her daughter starting school and said 'and of course i had to teach her how to open her own bag of crisps'. my friend, who has a daughter starting at the same class, just said 'why?'
pal's daughter knows how to open a banana, which her mother feels is as much packaging removal instruction as she needs right now.

Good for Jamie! He managed to goad the govt into action over something parents had been complaining about, in vain, for years. And I think he has as much right as anyone else to be concerned about what children eat because he, along with most other people, will have to pick up the tab eventually, in increased taxes, to fund the costs of ill-health and missed potential that poor diet causes. A decent packed lunch surely isn't rocket science? I don't even think it's necessary to think up a raft of new ideas for them. Ringing the changes with sandwich fillings and different fruit/veg can be enough, because children are creatures of habit and like to eat the same things repeatedly, ime!

It's not hard to eat well in the UK. I live in Nigeria where food is limited in choice (eg fresh milk, yoghurt, rarely available), poor quality (eg tap water isn't safe to drink), expensive (£3 for a small tub of Philly cheese) and can be time-consuming to prepare (eg any fruit/veg eaten raw has to be sterilised for 30mins first). Even my local piddly Coop in the UK has a better range of food than the largest shops here.

When I return I am astounded at the range of food in UK supermarkets, both the choice and quality. I am also astounded at the amount of cr*p, of course, but how people can afford to buy it regularly beats me!