Heavily featured on Radio 4 and BBC Breakfast this morning:
Only 1% of primary schoolchildren's packed lunches meet the nutritional standards set for school meals in England, a study suggests. Crisps, sweets, and sugary drinks still dominate over fruit and veg despite the government's drive to make lunchboxes healthier, the Leeds-based team says. They examined 1,300 schoolchildren's lunchboxes, the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reports...
Lead researcher Charlotte Evans, of Leeds University, said, sadly, the findings were not surprising. "It reflects the typical diet of the whole population*. Most adults would also have crisps or a chocolate bar and not enough fruit or veg in their lunchbox. There are many initiatives going on to improve our diet and exercise, but change won't happen overnight." She said banning certain foods from lunchboxes could help...
It's nice to see a rent-a-quote from a fakecharity** right at the end, but the BBC fail to round off with the usual quote from a government spokesman agreeing that more needs to be done.
* Said with no trace of irony.
** The School Food Trust "was established by the Department for Education and Skills in September 2005. Its remit is to transform school food and food skills, promote the education and health of children and young people and improve the quality of food in schools."
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
... and then they came for the packed lunches...
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2 comments:
They featured this on the 'Jeremy Vine Show' today (Fern Brittan is hosting this week -they'd do better with a real fern..). It was sickening how many people fell all over themselves to ring in to declare how healthy their children's lunches were; no-one pointed out that it was no business of the schools or the government.
I despair of this country sometimes...
It's always worth remembering that their idea of what's healthy is likely to have a pretty low scientific content. Much of it is likely to rely on the bogus results of Ancel Keys. I recommend
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/science_and_pseudoscience_in_adult_nutrition_research_and_practice/
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