6Jul2010
Jamie Oliver and children’s food
I was so disappointed to hear the new Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, claim last week that Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners campaign lectured people and hadn’t been successful. I personally feel that Jamie Oliver has done a significant amount to highlight the problem of childhood obesity and poor family eating habits in today’s Britain.
It’s so shameful that as a nation we may still be filling our children with turkey twizzlers and awful breaded nuggets for school lunch. Compare us with Italy, for example, who use fresh ingredients at no huge cost to feed their offspring proper brain food.
I distinctly remember watching another one of Jamie’s programmes (think different series) where he entered a house via a back garden full of beer cans and cigarette butts in an attempt to teach a young mum how to cook a simple family meal. The children in this case had been living off of cheap fast food and were sat on the floor eating doner kebabs from polystyrene boxes. Their mother seemed to have no idea as to how to put together basic ingredients and that lack of food knowledge was scarily being passed down to her children.
By teaching our kids the basics as to how to live well and fuel their growing bodies properly we are giving them the amazing gift of a healthier future. Andrew Lansley seems to be missing the point that when we let our children think that certain unhealthy behaviours are ok & normal their judgement for accepting what he describes as ‘personal responsibilty’ in later life for their general health is skewed. Without getting the message out there the danger is for a perpetual cycle of ignorance and indifference being passed from one generation to another.
Let’s face it Jamie Oliver is rich enough not to bother with time consuming and unprofitable campaigns. The cynics may suggest that it’s all great PR but I really think that he shows a genuine desire for change and that in the case of school dinners he used his celebrity status to good effect.
