Ever since Jamie Oliver dug up the dirt that was the meal situation in most UK schools, everyone has been talking about the need to change what our nation’s youngsters are eating. From the little insight provided by Oliver’s onscreen ordeal in getting better food available at an affordable price, it seems clear the issue is a complex one.
However, behind the scenes, the levels of complexity reach even more unintelligible depths. Numerous bodies seem to have a stake in the game, from parents, teachers, caterers and Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to the Department of Health (DoH), Department for Education and Schools (DfES) and, latterly, the School Food Trust (SFT). But, with so many interested parties, it is difficult to see who is, or should be, pulling the strings and what is actually being done.
When several mothers - since branded “junk mums” - were seen passing fast food through the railings to their children at one of Oliver’s pilot schools, it raised the question as to whether school food is even a political issue at all; and whether head teachers or, in fact, the head policy makers of the country, have the right to interfere with what pupils are eating at school.
This issue came to light at the Westminster Education Forum on Healthy Eating in Schools: Preparing for Implementation, held towards the end of last year, which saw various representatives from schools, government and the food industry gathered to fathom the progress being made. Speaking out against politicising school dinners was Jennie Bristow, a parent and former commissioning editor of online publication Spiked, who claimed government time and money should not be wasted on “something so banal as school meals”, highlighting that uptake of school dinners has reportedly fallen by 12.5 per cent since Oliver’s crusade began.
“In terms of education, [the politicisation of school meals] is a major distraction from what schools should be worrying about… to me it is far more important that schools worry about what children learn and think than what they eat and drink. Education is up to schools; food and all that is up to the parents,” said Bristow, suggesting that the School Meals Review Panel, which released dietary specifications in autumn 2005, was only a thinly disguised ruse to lambaste parents for making inappropriate choices concerning their children’s diets.
Also putting a dampener on the mission to revamp school food policy is the fact the Food Standard Agency’s latest enquiry into the effect of a healthier diet on children’s behavioural and performance patterns found the evidence to be inconclusive. However, The SFT, for one, is not giving this verdict too much sway. “We believe absolutely that a healthy diet has an impact on children’s behaviour and we have a big body of research - a very learned body - working to show that to be the case,” the SFT’s head of communications, Chris Wainwright, tells FPJ. “All the anecdotal evidence we have had from schools all over the country points absolutely to the fact that where children change their diets, it can change their behaviour.”
And, while Bristow’s view may be shared by certain parents, it seems the majority of people concerned are wholly in favour of change. Deputy head teacher, Steve Hatcher, from Harrogate, who has championed the reform of his school’s meals since 1999, told the forum: “By raising the standard and quality of all food served in school (chips are only served once a week as part of a meal, we do not serve any high sugar or carbonated drinks, fruit is subsidised and milk is the cheapest drink available); by improving the environment in which pupils eat, by providing customer care courses for all catering staff, by encouraging teachers to run lunchtime clubs and duties in return for free meals - for all these reasons and more, the children feel valued and the virtuous circle of behaviour and attitude develops.”
The issue of school meals has wider implications as well. According to the DoH, nearly 30 per cent of five to 11-year olds are overweight and the levels of obesity are rising more sharply in the UK than the rest of Europe, and fast approaching the percentages seen in the US. And it is these ill-nourished youngsters who will deplete the NHS of its funds through the tests and operations needed to quell their various obesity-related ailments as they grow into oversized adults. As such, moral conscience aside, it is very much in the government’s interest to take some preventative action and ditch the burgers in favour of healthier fresh produce-rich options, as Health Select Committee chairman and MP, Kevin Barron, says, where sanitation, and clean water used to top the agenda, the thing that threatens public health now is lifestyles…and I think government and parliament have got as much responsibility to take action, where it is feasible, against that threat.”
In this vein, the government has been working on various initiatives, orchestrated by a number of subsidiary policy-making organisations, the most recent of which is the SFT.
Set up in 2005, with £15 million of funding from DfES, the SFT has been charged with helping schools to implement the transformations outlined in the School Meals Review Panel’s report of the same year, Turning the Tables: Transforming School Food.
The Trust’s mission falls into four goals: ensuring all schools meet the food-based and impending nutrient-based standards for lunch and non-lunch food; increasing the uptake of school meals; reducing diet-related inequalities in childhood through food education and school-based initiatives; and improving food skills through food education, and school and community initiatives.
In achieving these, the SFT aims to consult with and support regional governments and their affiliated schools in spending the £220m of transitional funding awarded by the government for the 2005-8 period and the £240m already pledged for the next three-year spending review period.
Part of this remit is getting every school registered on the DoH’s Healthy Schools programme by 2009. Healthy Schools is the all-encompassing term for change under which eating healthy food is one key aspect. As Karen Turner, DoH’s children and young people’s public health programme manager, explains: “It’s a whole-school approach to tackling an issue. So we don’t just do something, it’s not just a piece of fruit and vegetable, it’s not just school lunch…it’s looking at the whole way food is managed across the school, across the day.” That is to say, it is not just about getting more fruit and veg into schools, but getting catering staff trained up enough to prepare them in an appetising way and pupils to sit down in an orderly fashion at meal times and actually choose the healthier options with the understanding that they are nutritious and delicious.
Local provenance hit home as a strong issue in the School Meal Review Panel, which stated: “the procurement of food served in schools should be consistent with sustainable development principles and schools and caterers should look to local farmers and suppliers for their produce where possible, tempered by a need for menus to meet the new nutritional standards and be acceptable in schools.”
The new nutrition-based standards will be implemented for primary schools from 2008 and from 2009 for secondary schools - which will be the most challenging to implement, according to Tony Sanders, managing director of caterer Scolarest’s state schools division. In charge of catering for around 2,000 schools, Sanders says most primary schools are well on the way to achieving the standards already, but despite the need for such uniformity he emphasises that each school should be regarded as individuals. “The kind of sheep-dip effect that tends to come across with this whole thing is really difficult to work, so we work very differently [with each school] and the speed of the journey is different,” he told the forum.
Some food-based guidelines are already in place, however, which spells good news for the produce industry. For instance, as per the regulations implemented in September 2006, it is now mandatory that “not less than two portions of fruit and vegetables should be available per day per child. At least one portion should be vegetables or salad, and at least one portion should be fruit.”
Under the guidelines, fruit includes fresh fruit, fruit tinned in juice, fruit salad (fresh or tinned in juice), fruit juice, and dried fruit; vegetables includes all fresh, frozen and tinned varieties - offered as a salad, garnish, cooked vegetable, or as part of a dish (for example, broccoli quiche or moussaka); baked beans and pulses are also included. Potatoes are not included in the guidelines but the British Potato council (BPC) has been working to ensure schools still regard them as a healthy part of children’s diets when prepared in formats other than fried (see adjacent box).
Portion sizes are not exactly defined but given that the suggestion for adults is 80g, schools are advised to halve that for primary schoolchildren and move towards the adult- sized portion for secondary school pupils. The primary school sizes amounts to one-to-two tablespoons of fruit or veg, half a dessert bowl of salad, a half-to-a-whole piece of fruit or 150ml of fruit juice.
According to the SFT, the School Fruit & Vegetable Scheme (SFVS) - through which every four-to-six year old is entitled to a piece of fruit or vegetable every day - does not fall under the jurisdiction of these guidelines, but the SFT’s Wainwright says there are affiliations between the separate organising bodies, and the SFT has pledged to “dedicate time to the catering industry and food producers and work with them to recognise ways that they can improve the food they supply”, which includes those involved in the SFVS.
“The SFVS is a separate scheme but we are liaising with the organisers,” Wainwright says. “It is all part of the same wellbeing programme. It is not part of our formal remit but inevitably we come into contact with suppliers and contractors and we are always looking to offer advice as to how they can improve their involvement where possible.”
As FPJ went to press, the SFT was due to meet with suppliers of the SFVS and its organisers, to discuss the format of the scheme going forward. And, contrary to what some of us were led to believe last year, the scheme will continue into the next academic year, with little changing apart from the name of the NHS division in charge of it. The NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (NHS PASA) has merged with logistics provider DHL to become NHS Supply Chain, whose aim is “to deliver cost-effective logistics and procurement services to healthcare providers across England”.
According to Mike Tiddy, now category manager for NHS Supply Chain, the DoH is due to announce its budget for next year’s funding imminently. “The SFVS is subject to DoH budgets like all other areas of health care and a decision on funding in 2007/8 has yet to be made,” he says. “We are confident that the funding will be approved in the very near future.”
Familiar with the buzzword - “whole school” - approach, Tiddy says the SFVS is keen not to be regarded in isolation. “We are also working on plans to continue to integrate the SFVS with wider school food initiatives,” he says. “We have taken on the administrative arrangements from regional offices and they are now concentrating on the delivery of the healthy eating strand of the Healthy Schools programme. We are also integrating the SFVS deliveries with the school meal service where possible, allowing for the fact that local authorities remain responsible for the school meal service contract. We will be reviewing the contracting activity from September 2007 when the current contracts expire.”
The DoH has also been supporting its commitment to the scheme, since its inception in 2003, by engaging the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER), and its partners at the University of Leeds, to undertake an ongoing evaluation of the value of the scheme in increasing consumption of fresh produce among first and second-year schoolchildren.
The initial evaluation released in 2005 revealed the SFVS did not have as much of a life-changing effect on the children involved as one might have hoped. According to the NFER report, in general, “fruit consumption increased (by about half a portion a day) among children participating in the scheme, but there did not seem to be any wider impact on diet, and increased consumption was not sustained when children’s participation in the scheme came to an end.” On the other hand, the research also found “the combined fruit and vegetable consumption of children eating school dinners was greater than those who had packed lunches”, and “there was some evidence of a positive SFVS-related impact on the attitudes, knowledge and awareness of pupils in the intervention area.”
The results suggested the scheme may have a greater impact upon children involved for a longer period of time and, to this end, NFER has now been evaluating the scheme in the context of a whole school approach to healthy eating, says senior research officer David Teeman. “In our current evaluation of the SFVS, as well as measuring food intake, we are asking schools for information about how (and to what extent) they are addressing the healthy eating agenda,” he says. “This information will enable us to explore how, if at all, consumption relates to the extent to which schools have adopted whole school approaches. For instance, is the fruit and vegetable consumption at schools with comprehensive approaches to the healthy eating agenda better than that at other schools?” The findings from the latest phase of research are being evaluated and will be released in April.
Aside from a few dissenters, it seems the healthy eating in schools brigade is largely supported and, more importantly, successful, judging by anecdotal evidence at least. While the jury is still out on whether simply providing more fruit and veg is making a difference, there is reason to believe in the impact of improving school dinners and it seems that when you integrate that provision within a wider context of educated habit changing there can be real benefits - for everyone from the children whose developing bodies are properly fuelled, the school staff who have to eat the same stuff, the caterers given the capacity to prepare decent food, suppliers of said food, and the future NHS healthcare costs; as such, it stands to reason that the impetus for change lies with every one of the parties involved.
SPUDS FIGHT FOR RECOGNITION
Following the introduction of the new school meal guidelines last year, the British Potato Council (BPC) has been working to ensure school caterers recognise potatoes as an important part of healthy school meals, which are naturally low in fat, contain fibre, vitamin C and folate, as well as being low in sodium.
The BPC developed two special resource packs for school caterers, both of which are reportedly proving to be a big hit, with the council having received more than 6,000 requests to date. Details of both packs and other advice can be found on the BPC’s caterer’s website, www.potatoesforcaterers.co.uk
The Potato Day pack has been specifically designed for primary schools to promote school lunches and encourage children to eat potatoes as part of a healthy meal.
BPC marketing executive, Caroline Evans, said the potato-themed events are proving very popular with pupils: “By providing schools with the information and resources they need to hold their own special, themed Potato Day, we hope to encourage more children to take up a lunch-time meal and also to get them enjoying potatoes as part of healthy, balanced meals,” she said. “One school reported a one third increase in school meal uptake on their Potato Day. The pack has also been designed so that Potato Days can become a regular feature on the school meal plan.”
Secondary schools are also catered for with the Jacket Potato Bar pack. Evans said: “Introducing a Jacket Potato Bar is an effective way of positively promoting school lunches as well as providing a convenient and balanced lunchtime choice. A regular Jacket Potato Bar can help caterers achieve the latest school meal nutritional standards and persuade more pupils to take up a lunchtime meal.”
Meanwhile, the Grow Your Own Potatoes campaign is once again underway to help children learn about healthy eating, where their food comes from and how it grows. The project was initially launched in response to the fact that six out of 10 children thought that potatoes grew on trees but the success of the scheme over the last two years means that nine out of 10 children now understand how potatoes are grown.
Project organiser for the BPC, Tracy Coult, said: “We’ve been delighted by the previous success of the ‘Grow Your Own Potatoes’ project, which helps to create a greater understanding of the potato growing process among schoolchildren in a fun and interactive way. Nearly 1,100 schools took part last year and 96 per cent said they would like to do so again. With additional support from levy payers, hopefully we can smash this in 2007.”
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