food rant

[minervasolo]

It's not secret that I don't like cooking. I find it boring, and takes too long for the pay off. I'll eat potato smilies, and the occasional microwave meal. I'm a damn fussy eater. I won't eat fruit or veg I haven't had before, in most cases. I guess I'm lucky I was fed a good variety as a kid!

I'm watching Jaime's School Dinners. He's been talking to primary school kids. All but one had chips for dinner, and that one had a pot noodle. Only one kid could recognise and rubarb and a leek, and no one got asparagus. Fair enough for young kids, but when they're guessing celery and kiwi I'm scared.

They follow each other. One fussy kids can put off the rest, and often does. The school dinner is often the main meal of these kids' days, and the most nutrition they'll get until the next school dinner. The kids are happy to eat turkey twizzlers (less than 30% turkey, and I've no idea what makes up the other 70% and I'm scared to know) but think plain turkey is disgusting. I don't get it.

The packed lunches are scary too. Four chocolate bars, a packet of crisps, a bottle of ribena and a sandwich that's promptly binned. Four chocolate bars? Ngh! And the parents are surprised that the kids are irritable and hyper. One of the reasons that ADD medicine is less commonly prescribed in this country compared with others like America is because doctors reccomend a diet change first, and it usually works. I thought it was common knowledge that the chemicals in processed food cause mood swings and so on, and not just in kids. Apparently not. The local doctor talked about a 'constipation clinic' for the kids. For some of them it's been more than seven weeks. If that's not an indicator of bad diet I don't know what is.

What happened to the parents? None of them are so young they can have been brought up on microwave dinners. Fair enough, being lazy or tired or cheap occasionally, but every single meal? I've met the odd person who thinks it's gross to eat stuff that comes from the ground or off a tree, but it never occurred to me there were so many. I'm scared. Is anyone surprised we have an obesity problem in this country?

The dinner ladies don't like working off 37p per meal. They're cooks, not microwave operators. There's no job satisfaction in reheating. Jamie has already proved it's possible to make food for several hundred kids in a few hours, though it was over budget. The budget is government funding. I'm pretty certain a few extra pence in the school dinners budget would save a whole lot of money for the NHS. No more constpiation clinics, for a start.

I just... I just don't get it. I wouldn't do that to a kid. Couldn't. I swear, if I ever have kids, or get hold of someone else's, there will be no squash, no crisps, no salt, no fizzy drinks, no microwave anything. Chips, pizza, even burgers are alright in moderation. By which I mean once or twice a week, not once or twice a day. I've been bad recently with my potato smilies, but at least I could pronounce the ingredients. I will do my best to avoid anything with numbers in. I haven't had crisps, fizzy drinks, or burgers for years. Raspberries are not blue, lemons are not pink and nothing on this planet is that shade of atomic orange.

Jamie spent his last day feeding the kids a healthy meal. In budget. It's popular. As he points out, "it's a big V sign to all those companies that say they're just giving kids what they want." You can feed kids healthily, you can feed them cheapily, you can feed them food they will eat. The companies are scared to give up 'popular' menus because customer will go elsewhere, or go without. Schools don't want complaints, so they go for popular. Give it time, I say. They're kids. They don't know what they like and don't like. Don't let them convince each other they only like what's sold in Mcdonalds and Dominos (both of which were recognised where leeks weren't). let them find out for themselves.

~~~

Jamie's accusing Bill Clinton and his mates of being 'plebs'. His restaurant had worked out a meal, confirmed in advance, for 16 people. 30 people turned up, and declared they were on the 'South Beach Diet' and they had to chuck away all the food, prepared over the last fortnight by Jamie's student chefs, and serve chicken, stakes and ketechup. Jamie refused to talk to Clinton. I think it all speaks for itself, doesn't it? (And Clinton's one of the few US presidents I admire)

Comments

[toasty-renfield.livejournal.com]

At least I'm cooking tomorrow...oh...today.

[ginger-311.livejournal.com]

i agree with everything in that rant well done!!

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

Well said :)

I wanted to watch that last night, but I was at THING. I did see last week's though and ws disgusted, although not surprised, at what these chidren eat. I'd like to see more cooking being don in schools, with children being given the skills to prepare healthy and tasty meals. Of course this should be the responsility of the parents, but when most parents would rather bung something in the microwave than chop up some veg then the government really does have to step in to prevent an enormous health problem later.

The kids who bring snaks to Homework Club all bring crisps and chocolate, only a few of them will drink water without cordial or squash and most of them proclaim loudly how they hate vegetables. I remember when I was their age and I can completely understand them. All the veg we had at home was boiled and uninspiring (sorry to my mum, but it's true, she's the reason I kept away from veg for years) and the stuff at school was just the same. If they're not given the chance to experience veg prepared in a tasty way then they'll never be convinced that it's not crap.

Anyway I could rant like that for ages!

What exasctly did Jamie feed the kids btw? I'm keen to know what it was that they did like.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

It was a pasta thing with seven different vegetables in the sauce, and I think he did some chicken breasts or similar with it. He kept doing curry for the oolder kids, which they all hated, but he's managed a few healthy pizzas that have gone down well. Mpore often than not it's not the meal that's the problem, it's what's in it.

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

Mmmm...

I remember the pizza things he did last week. They looked really nice and reminded me of the pizzas we used to have at school. Well, they called them pizzas, but what they really were was a sausage sitting in a round of pizza dough. Man they were nice though. The dinner ladies always made us have at least two portions of veg and encouraged us to eat them. Whatever happened to that?

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

We got pizza quite often, but never burger and chips and so on. I doubt there was much nutrition in the overboiled vegetable and soggy potatoes and sliced meat, but at least there were recognisable food groups, and you had to have all of them. At primary school you weren't allowed to leave the table til you cleared your plate, including limp carrots and yellow peas and all. I was astonished when I found out my sister's school just did fast food, with sandwiches offered but never eaten. I didn't see the point. Aren't school dinners meant to be healthy but foul, after all?

[annapanna.livejournal.com]

you know, for a program like that their gunna pick a school thats particulally bad. and there are a couple of things you need to remember, for our generation things like foods effecting your mood and health maybe general knowledge, but that wasn't so true of older generations, and many of these kids parents from those older generations, may not of got the kinda education that would tell them stuff like this, some of the reasearch into studying the effects of chemicals and e numbers on childrens behaviour is quite recent (ie, within the last 10 - 20 years) and also many parents are unaware of what their children eat during school, if they have school dinners (obviousl7y those with packed lunches don't have that excuse) and of course the other thing is that the school gets to spend a massive (what was it?) like 37p per child, go try fed your self healthaly for 37p you'll find its much cheaper to buy pot noodles, or chips or turkey things with only 30% turkey, plus guess what the children eat them, because their (Strangely) more appealing! i agree with you mostly though, my mum never gave me chips every day and through most of school i had packed lunches with never ever had chips or chocolate in it, i thought it was disgusting and i'd tried not to eat most of it, so it kinda goes both ways, but its not hard to make health food which is appealing! and many of the kids parents don't have the any excuses. although i guess if you work full time and your a single mum its too easy to give into what the kids want, anyways go jaime oliver!