Did you see Jamies School Dinners last night? An interesting programme pointing out some of the bad things that are happening in education. The school he was in produced each 2 course lunch for an average of 37p on ingredients, one lad when asked said his usual lunch was a plate of chips and a bowl of Custard. Another girl said it was the same stuff got at home. I think one of the most interesting points was when he got some of the food analysed, the kitchen was not allowed to add salt but yet all the pre prepared food came full of it, it was also lacking in vitamins and iron both of which had an impact on the education, the iron apparently helps concentration and vitamins keep the immune system working, therefore a lack of both means the students dont concentrate as well and are off sick more often. I think this is perhaps another area of education where the government is failing, but what about us as parents and youth workers? I know as a parent if I want my children to eat a good amount nuggets and chips will always go down well (we do give them some peas and sweetcorn as well which also go) but if we try and give them something more balanced sometimes it will be eaten, sometimes it will decorate our floor! What can we as the church, or even should we be doing to try and improve the diet of young people both inside and outside school, if we believe we are a part of Gods creation it is our responsibility to look after our bodies and help others to do the same, can we do that for 37p a head?
The thing that really winds me up is I have to pay £1.50 a day per child for school meals BUT only 44p of that is used on the meal!
Youthblog
Thats even worse than last nights programme as they were only paying £1, so 37% of the cost went on ingredients as opposed to your 29% I understand you need to pay staff and electricity/Gas etc but this can’t be right, we are damaging our children.
I think it’s amazing that there ARE any schools still doing dinners!
In our area most of them stopped ages ago.
For 37p a head though you can do WAY better. Vegetables are cheaper than people think if you buy them fresh not tinned but then labour costs go up for preparation.
A tough old balance!
Of course I recall someone saying that the addition of yoghurt made anythign palatable to their child! ;0P
My sister did try the ‘add yoghurt’ approach – with a strawberry yoghurt… and some peas. There IS someone alive ditzier than me!
Seriously though, it does give us something to think about – we’ve been including fruit and cereal bars in the tuc shop, and offering fruit juice along side the fizz…. but at how many of our youth events do we offer a ‘balenced’ diet?
We started offering grapes and satsumas as well as choclate snacks and crisps and fruit juice as well as fizzy drinks but the BIG thing is these things COST more!
We started offering grapes and satsumas as well as choclate snacks and crisps and fruit juice as well as fizzy drinks but the BIG thing is these things COST more!