School is back and, as I do every year, I find myself struggling to ensure my daughter gets a healthy and tasty lunch. Having been brought up in Spain where sandwiches are for snacking, ideally I would like her to have a ‘proper’ cooked lunch. School dinners should provide just that, but the current offering is not tempting.
Despite Jamie Oliver’s best efforts a few years ago, the reality of the food served in schools remains bleak. I am not talking now of the widely despised ‘Turkey twizzlers’ (although their marine equivalents are still what passes for fish in many schools) but of the quality of the fruit and vegetables presented to our children. If we want children to have a healthier diet, it is not enough to provide caterers with strict nutritional guidelines – the food they supply needs to be tasty and attractive.
I cannot claim to know what the food is like in every school, but if our local primary is anything to go by, out-of-season fruit, overcooked broccoli and other unappetisingly presented vegetables are still the norm. This is partly due to school caterers’ tight budgets (delivering a nutritious two-course meal for £2.20 is not easy) and partly due to the insufficient training of the staff in charge of delivering those meals. Neither is likely to improve when government starts to relax the need for school academies to comply with nutritional guidelines.
So, the answer is a healthy packed lunch full of exciting fruit and vegetables, right? Sadly, I have discovered that anything too exciting in a lunch box, such as a home-grown purple carrot, can leave a child exposed to mockery by her peers.
The Food Dudes initiative has done so much to show that we have the knowledge to change dietary habits of children for years to come. The mechanism for engaging the three Rs – repeat tasting, role models and rewards – is a powerful recipe, and scientifically proven to work across all social structures, with those from the poorest families benefiting most.
As a parent, I would like to see the industry engaging with the Departments of Education and Health and local schools, to see this programme rolled out in the whole of the UK. Furthermore, feeding oneself is as important as literacy and numeracy and can be used as a tool to teach both. I believe that cooking should become a compulsory part of the curriculum in primary and secondary schools and local producers should become a driving force behind such initiatives.
As a member of the industry, I would like to see an internal culture change too. Aggressive marketing works; more resources should be devoted to getting the younger generations excited about the best quality fresh produce. After all, these are our future customers.
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