School Sinners

September 16, 2006 1:42 AM

Fed up with the quality of the food on offer at a Yorkshire school, concerned mothers have taken matters into their own hands
posted by Flashman (49 comments total)

A couple of years back, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver launched a campaign to force schools to ditch their notoriously lard-laden, deep fried fare in favour of fresh, healthy stuff. The education ministry accepted the challenge. This is the result.
posted by Flashman at 1:46 AM on September 16, 2006

Wow, The Sun's website really has got a lot better recently. Much nicer to read than the actual paper.
posted by reklaw at 1:59 AM on September 16, 2006

I just don’t like him and what he stands for

Brilliant. Sod the steamed veg drizzled with balsamic vinegar, we want pies and chips. Reminiscent of the scenes at the comprehensive in Kidlington where he first tried throwing out the Turkey Twizzlers and the kids practically mutinied.
posted by greycap at 1:59 AM on September 16, 2006

Ohh, so that is why Plato's Socrates insisted that to create Kallipolis you had to work with only the untarnished youth, and none of the previous corrupt generation.
posted by TwelveTwo at 2:22 AM on September 16, 2006

That's just...wrong...

I mean I don't want to deny kids a treat. But believing that greasy deep-fried chips from a British take-away are "better" for kids than what Oliver has tried to get on the menus amounts to child abuse, as far as I can see. They're bringing meals for 60 kids...what do the 60 kids parents think about junk food being smuggled to their kids when real food is on offer.
posted by Jimbob at 2:52 AM on September 16, 2006

I prefer the BBC's headline for this:

Parents feed pupils through gates

I got to about the fourth word and my brain was expecting to see "woodchipper" or "meat grinder" ...
posted by kcds at 3:12 AM on September 16, 2006

what do the 60 kids parents think about junk food being smuggled to their kids when real food is on offer.

Well, the 'real food' in question is this:

The school charges 75p for a slice of pizza or £1.70 for a pizza meal deal — which is a slice of pizza plus a piece of fruit and a drink. Jacket potatoes are 65p plus 35p per filling, while sandwiches cost 75p. (from The Sun)

and yet...

they [the parents] had several orders for jacket potatoes and salad sandwiches alongside those for burgers and fish and chips. (from the BBC)

... which would suggest that something more is at work here. The explanation seems more likely to be this:

She said their actions had been prompted by the school's new half hour meal breaks, as pupils did not have long enough to eat.... "By the time the children have queued to get their lunch they haven't time to eat it." (one of the mothers, in the BBC article)

Head teacher John Lambert said reorganising the school day and keeping pupils on site during breaks had already shown its benefits.

"Our motives are about effective education," he said. "Afternoon lateness has dropped to virtually zero and we know they are learning better in the afternoons." (BBC)

The issue doesn't appear to be about feeding the kids junk food or healthy food -- both the school and the parents are offering a choice between junk food (pizzas at the school, chips from the parents) or healthier food (jacket potatoes and sandwiches are available from both).

That mention of "afternoon lateness" is what gives the real game away, I reckon. I think it's a simple matter of some parents being frustrated that their kids lunch breaks have been cut back to half an hour, meaning that they can't come home for lunch any more. Given that they were having the kids home by choice to begin with, they probably miss having their kids at home at lunchtime, and feel that the new rules are unfair. So they're trying to make out that the lunch the school provides is no good, so now that their kids can't come home they have to take food to the schools themselves.

Unfortunately, it's backfired on them big style, because "Jamie Oliver makes school dinners healthy and then parents bring in junk food" makes a damn good story.
posted by reklaw at 3:21 AM on September 16, 2006

The story here is actually not very clear - and I don't think any of the different reports have helped.

Sure, the parents and the pupils are complaining about the taste of the low-fat food. But they are also saying that the school food is too expensive, and that the lunch hour there has been reduced to 1/2 an hour, so that the pupils don't have time to line up for the food and then to eat.

Remembering my own over crowded and claustrophobic high school cafeterial, I find it easy to believe that the lunch room is horrid to eat it. I left school every day at lunch, even though I almost always had a packed lunch. But now the students can't even get their lunches in time, due to the short break.

Tthere is no reason that the schools should be charging that much more than local take-aways, when they have a captive audience, have government funding and don't have to make a profit. Baked (aka "Jacket") potatoes are cheaper than a cone of chips to make, so there is no excuse for charging more. The taste issue is also real. If the cooks in British schools are anything like the professional chefs at my husband's British university, they may be quite well trained, but usually obsessed with cooking heavy, bland European style food. They've never heard of spices, or legumes. If you are going to cut out the fat -- which is a large part of the taste in European food -- than you have bring something else in.
posted by jb at 3:34 AM on September 16, 2006

I think you're right, reklaw - the cost and time constraints do seem to have a big part in this, and the media (and me!) are ignoring that to push this theme of junk food-addicted proles - but I do think there's a big chunk of truth in this too.
Pretty much everything you hear about the new regime of healthy food is kids complaining and choosing to go out to the chip shop instead.
It's ironic, considering how body image is supposed to be such an overwhelming factor in kid's lives as well - another big story earlier this week was about the popularity of steroids among Britain's yoof.
posted by Flashman at 3:36 AM on September 16, 2006

(and jb)
posted by Flashman at 3:37 AM on September 16, 2006

When i was at school I set up a small 'business' ordering pizza for other pupils and having it delivered at lunch time. Trade was only worthwhile on a monday; kids were so desperate to break the monotony of school dinners they would blow their whole weeks dinner money in a day.

I suppose being hungry on friday is all part of learning to budget.
posted by verisimilitude at 3:47 AM on September 16, 2006

I think it's a simple matter of some parents being frustrated that their kids lunch breaks have been cut back to half an hour, meaning that they can't come home for lunch any more.

Aah...I missed the connection between this and the mothers claiming "It's all Jamie Oliver's fault!".
posted by Jimbob at 3:47 AM on September 16, 2006

what the heck is a turkey twizzler? From an American point of view, that sounds really gross (twizzlers here are red chewy candy ropes).
posted by gminks at 3:47 AM on September 16, 2006

Pupils at a South Yorkshire school are being fed fish and chips through the gates by parents who say the canteen is not providing what their children want.

But hang on...why don't the parents provide what the children want then, to begin with, instead of complaining about the school?

I'll come out of the cultural closet and say that, as an Australian, I don't understand the whole "school dinners" thing you have in the US and UK to begin with. I went to school every day with a lunchbox packed by my mum. There was no government regulated, school-supplied "lunch". There was a tuck shop that we could buy snacks from if we wanted to, as something extra. But you bought your own lunch. Why did the public school system in the US and UK evolve in such a way that parents expect the school to feed their children for them? Is it just climatic? Hot food?
posted by Jimbob at 3:50 AM on September 16, 2006

The tragic part of Jamie Oliver's elevation to Sainthood is that the enormous archive of the fat-tongued Mockney cunt that used to reside at hairytongue.com is now lost to the world.

But through the miracle of the Wayback Machine. (Shockwave required.)
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:50 AM on September 16, 2006

gminks, yup -- replace the candy with the turkey...
posted by popcassady at 3:54 AM on September 16, 2006

I particularly like the headteacher saying "I question the morality of delivering it from the grounds of a cemetery".
posted by paduasoy at 3:56 AM on September 16, 2006

I don't know what they put in the jacket potatoes over in England, but the ones I've seen hardly qualify for health food.
posted by QuarterlyProphet at 4:19 AM on September 16, 2006

jimbob wins the thread!
posted by Funmonkey1 at 4:29 AM on September 16, 2006

The children are already addicted to additives and breaded artificial foods shaped like dinosaurs before they start school, there is no chance of them being converted to Moroccan Couscous Salad for lunch by the time they are 5.
posted by fire&wings at 4:44 AM on September 16, 2006

Can't speak for Brits.
But American mothers are much more comfortable operating their mouths than their kitchens. (on average)
posted by notreally at 4:45 AM on September 16, 2006

jimbob wins the thread!

I do? What do I win?

Ignoring the whole "heath food" thing, I'm serious - what's the history behind school lunches in the US and the UK? Or, perhaps to the other side, what's the history behind the lack of them in Australia?

I mean, if the government is supplying healthy, nutritionally balanced meals to every child in the country, it's probably a great idea.

If the government is supplying deep fried extruded crumbed turkey twizzlers to every child in the country, I can understand exactly where Jamie Oliver has been coming from.
posted by Jimbob at 4:50 AM on September 16, 2006

Ha ha! Northern trash!

England, I propose a deal. Send these bitches to a zoo in the US. We will breed them with some of our southerners and see what happens when you mix the shallow end of the anglophone gene pools.
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:55 AM on September 16, 2006

Jimbob: In the UK at least, it's a reformist Victorian hangover (although it didn't start until 1906). The point was to make sure the poor poverty-stricken urchins got at least one hot meal a day.

This is still pretty much the justification for school dinners today - although explanations tend towards bad parenting, rather than simple poverty these days.

Mayor Curley: you're behaving like a dick.
posted by Leon at 4:57 AM on September 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

JimBob, it's not free, for one thing. From what I remember from the few years I went to various schools in Britain I did have to take a few pounds every monday to help cover the cost.
And the food was variable in quality, e.g. a school I was at in rural Wales for a year would serve an amazing meat and potato stew (called 'cowl' or something like that) once a week or so, served with fresh-baked bread - yummm. But mostly school dinners really were stuff like Spam deep fried in batter, mashed potatoes, mushy peas, fish fingers, and all dolloped on your tray by grim, scowling middle aged 'dinner ladies' - not trained chefs by any stretch of the imagination.
posted by Flashman at 5:03 AM on September 16, 2006

If you fall below a certain income bracket it is free - see here for people who qualify. The Education Secretary has powers to set a minimum statutory framework of standards the food has to come up. Jamie's programme was implicitly critical of the Thatcher reforms that allowed schools to contract out food provision, arguing that it resulted in a decline in standards as schools went for penny-saving rather than necessarily focusing on cheap but high-quality food. I have some sympathy with this argument.

If you want to look at the response this had within Government, check out this report.
posted by greycap at 5:14 AM on September 16, 2006

Oh, and best tag ever, Flashman...
posted by greycap at 5:15 AM on September 16, 2006

Jamie said he was “f****** bored with being polite” and added: “Now is the time to say, ‘If you’re giving your young children fizzy drinks, you’re an a*******, a t****r.

I understand “f******." But my English->English doesn't translate "t****r." Please advise. And I think they spelled "a*******" wrong.
posted by hal9k at 5:23 AM on September 16, 2006

tosser = wanker = onaniste
posted by Flashman at 5:27 AM on September 16, 2006

And on the last point, you say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to, you say asshole, I say arsehole.
posted by greycap at 5:36 AM on September 16, 2006

Early School Lunch Reform (html). And a detailed history (Danger! PDF!) per country and per US city plus background on the Child Nutrition Act of 1966.
posted by hal9k at 5:53 AM on September 16, 2006

Oliver doesn't need the publicity or the shift in public appreciation this gave him - was doing very nicely as a chef and TV person. I applaud him for revealing the horrible-ness of the school dinner menu and the untrained staff. His programme and book have brought a change for the better, all snarking (the easiest diet of all) aside.
posted by A189Nut at 5:56 AM on September 16, 2006

I would assume t****r is "tosser", but I'm not a Brit.
posted by Justinian at 6:31 AM on September 16, 2006

I don't know what they put in the jacket potatoes over in England, but the ones I've seen hardly qualify for health food.
posted by QuarterlyProphet at 12:19 PM GMT on September 16 [+] [!]

Baked potatoes are pretty good for you. All potatoes have a highish glycemic index, but baking them keeps most of the nutrients (unlike boiling) but is also low fat (unlike roasting or frying). They are only high fat if you put high fat things on them - even with a bit of butter and salt, they are delicious, and not bad for you. With low-fat sour cream or perhaps some low fat beans, also yummy. All better for you than chips, as much as I love British chips (some of the best I've ever had).
posted by jb at 6:48 AM on September 16, 2006

gminks: Tukey twizzler... Mechanically reclaimed turkey 'meat' formed into a corkscrew (with added 'stuff' to keep its shape), coated with breadcrumbs, deep fried or oven roasted.

Looks like a piece of s**t (following the Sun's style of writing). Probably tastes the same...

(picture from a GIS)
posted by nielm at 7:22 AM on September 16, 2006

At the private school I attended (bad me), kids brought their own lunches, while the school provided milk, chocolate milk, or juice. There was no immediate charge for the drinks, though a monthly bill issued to parents, based on a tally of what was consumed.

The whole cafeteria deal for public schools always struck me as a contract grab more than anything else. Just one food service vendor competing against another. Hence cheap pizza, steam franks, etc. - or in other areas, Big Money seeking a younger market, as with Snapple's no-bid arrangement in NYC.
posted by Smart Dalek at 7:28 AM on September 16, 2006

Like Jimbob - I pretty much always took my own lunch to school, trips to the canteen were restricted to once a week and although there were healthy options it was a chance to splurge on a meat pie with dead horse....

In my brief teaching stint here (Japan) at schools I was surprised by how much effort was put into school lunches. Many schools try hard to provide a nutritional meal, with lots of veggies. There was a classroom roster for the kids to serve and clean up. To my surprise some of it actually tasted pretty good.

So maybe they need to look at importing some of these Japanese super-cooks?
posted by gomichild at 7:37 AM on September 16, 2006

Shit sweetening aspartame ! And shit newspaper too , but anyway

1. the "mums" here look like they are ..uhm..somehow overweight, I would sa, looking at the picture of their behinds. And white trash too ! But hey go ahead, your ass, your choice.
2. what is so absolutely untolerable in the school lunch that they can't cover with a little sauce, spice ?
3. saucing or spicing is how almost everything is made palatable..try eating the meat from a MCsomething without any sauce or blend of tastes on it..it tastes like ..meat. Try eating chicken without curry or salt or rosemary or something else..it's just infinitely boring.

on top of that I have to question the morality of delivering it from the grounds of a cemetery.

Feh ! If they are not damaging the graves or harrassing visiting relatives , what the hell is wrong with walking on a cemetery ?
posted by elpapacito at 7:44 AM on September 16, 2006

hal9k: Nah, they got a******* right. The "English" English version has only one "s" and adds an "r" and an"e":

arsehole

I've always preferred the word "arse" to "ass". Its got a bit more oomph to it.
posted by davehat at 7:45 AM on September 16, 2006

My father is from Yorkshire, and this doesn't surprise me at all. Fat is a food group unto itself there. The beauty of it is they all live to 95 eating shit their entire lives. We were visiting Scarborough in '91 and the produce section of Tescos consisted entirely of cans. It was awesome.
posted by jimmythefish at 8:11 AM on September 16, 2006

I'll come out of the cultural closet and say that, as an Australian, I don't understand the whole "school dinners" thing you have in the US and UK to begin with. I went to school every day with a lunchbox packed by my mum.

Okay. Lots of kids in the US do too.

There was a tuck shop that we could buy snacks from if we wanted to, as something extra.

Now imagine that the tuck shop sold complete hot meals as well, for parents who wanted their kids to have a hot meal at lunch. Can you imagine that? Good.

Now you understand 99% of what there is to understand about school lunches in the US. You may bring your lunch or buy one from the school "cafeteria," which is American for "tuck shop." Or, in some secondary schools, you may leave campus for lunch and get lunch where you please.

That's it. No mystery about it. You have tuck shops that sell snacks, ours sell full lunches as well.

The only other difference is that there are programs so that kids under a certain income can get a school lunch at reduced price or for free.

Why did the public school system in the US and UK evolve in such a way that parents expect the school to feed their children for them?

They didn't. Many parents pack a lunch for their kids.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:20 AM on September 16, 2006

From the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Nutrition Service, The National School Lunch Program — Background and Development is a detailed history of school lunch programs in several countries. In England:

...the passage in 1905 of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act was the culmination of the efforts of 365 private, charitable organizations in attempting to provide meals at school for needy children, and a reflection of national concern over the physical condition of the populace. Shortly before the close of the Boer War, the country became aroused over a statement by Major-General Frederick Maurice that three out of every five men seeking enlistment in the army were found to be physically unfit. Shortly after the statement had been published, the King appointed The Royal Commission . on Physical Training to study the programs of physical training in schools and to determine what ought to be done to improve the national physique and thus build up the army.

The Commission came to the conclusion that "among the causes which tell against the physical welfare of the population, the lack of proper nourishment is one of the most serious," and that "the question of the proper and sufficient feeding of children is one which has the closest possible connection with any scheme which may be adopted for their physical and equally for their mental work." 3 A recommendation was made for the establishment of school lunches for which the children would pay a small fee.

Early U.S. programs were also started by private groups, and Congress passed the National School Lunch Act in 1946.
posted by cenoxo at 9:24 AM on September 16, 2006

EWW turkey twizzlers look nasty!

In the US, alot of counties have outsourced their cafeterias. There is a central cafeteria that delivers the same crap to every school...I think they make the food at my son's high school...but they really do not feed them balanced food. lots of fried stuff.

A city next to us has cut back portions, and the kids (esp the active ones) don't get enough calories. They tell them to buy TWO lunches.

Unless you are living at a certain percentage of the poverty line or below, you pay for your lunch.Thank goodness now I can afford to send lunches with my son. That was not always the case..

If you want to talk total rip-off...my daughter is now in college, and if you are in the dorms they REQUIRE you to buy a meal plan...and getting healty food there is a real challenge (Friday nights are poppers and hot wing nights...she is getting sick of the salad bar!)
posted by gminks at 2:36 PM on September 16, 2006

Aaah, now I get it. Ain't lernin' wonderful, Rapid Offensive Unit Xenophobe?

My mind had been warped by thousands upon thousands of TV shows and movies, showing students filing into the cafeteria to have dollops of vegetables boiled to within inches of thieir lives ladeled onto their plates, and I thought "something that grey and ugly just has to be government funded". Same when I watched Jamie Oliver's show. Kinda didn't cross my mind that parents would individually pay for that to be fed to their kids, instead of sending them to school with a nice sandwich.
posted by Jimbob at 3:44 PM on September 16, 2006

Why did the public school system in the US and UK evolve in such a way that parents expect the school to feed their children for them?

As others have said, Jimbob, it was a social reform in England. When I was at school (mid 60s to mid 70s), had it not been for school lunches, I would not have had a 'proper' meal every day (I come from the English equivalent of poor white trash - dinner was usually bread & jam or, if the bread was stale, toast and jam).
posted by essexjan at 4:17 PM on September 16, 2006

If you want to talk total rip-off...my daughter is now in college, and if you are in the dorms they REQUIRE you to buy a meal plan...and getting healty food there is a real challenge (Friday nights are poppers and hot wing nights...she is getting sick of the salad bar!)


I remember having to endure that. Healthiness aside, just finding something palatable can be a challenge. We saw the packaging once and discovered the cafeteria at my dorm was using "prison grade" meat. Yum.
posted by juv3nal at 4:58 PM on September 16, 2006

I think there there is a cultural difference between the UK and the US, and Australia and Canada (and other places, I assume). In Canada (Toronto, 80s-90s), we had no hot food in grade school, and a cafeteria in high school (that was shut down to be replaced with a pizza pizza kiosk and Tim Hortons).

But there is no such thing as a "school lunch program" where I'm from - never a suggestion for free or subsidized lunches for low income students (as happens in Britain and in some places in the U.S.). I hear about free breakfasts or free lunches all the time in the US (because it's a good proxy for poverty when doing research, for one thing), but no such thing existed in Toronto - or anywhere in Canada? I know, because I would have qualified.
posted by jb at 5:26 PM on September 16, 2006

In the 90s a few public schools started offering free meal programs in BC, jb -- I had friends in Kelowna, Vancouver, and Quesnel who received free or almost free lunches -- but I think it's pretty rare. And most of the lunches didn't go beyond pizza or cup soups from a canteen; there were few real meals.

We never had hot meals in grade school (with the exception of hotdog day or pizza day -- on hotdog day the steamed hotdogs would come loaded into coolers and we had a choice of plain or chocolate milk or a juice box) and there were no high schools with operating cafeterias in my home town (that I know of, at least).

Private schools here, however, consistently have non-optional hot meal programs.
posted by Felicity Rilke at 5:48 PM on September 16, 2006

I thought "something that grey and ugly just has to be government funded".

It's certainly government funded in the sense that it's run by the gubmint.

Real ones are, unsurprisingly, not as bad as their image on tv.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:50 PM on September 16, 2006