A
Ardross
Guest
Good on him - once again the evil one is to blame with her abolition of nutritional standards in 1980
School dinners: a recipe for disaster?
Jamie Oliver argues schools should not serve junk food, but says it's impossible to provide nutritious meals for 37p. It is the latest attack in a long battle over the feeding of children, reports Cahal Milmo
21 February 2005
Each of the diners was seated at a table decorated with a cloth and flowers. Their meal of porridge and wholemeal bread was prepared within a meagre budget but the aim was laudable: "To achieve a balance of protein and fat to fortify body and mind".
Behind this project lay a visionary chef, widely seen as ahead of her culinary era by dedicating effort not to exciting the tastebuds of monied gourmands but those of the nation's children at a time of rising anxiety at the state of their nutritional health.
It may sound like an appraisal of Jamie Oliver's high-profile crusade to improve school meals after spending a month working in the kitchens of a London comprehensive.
But the cook who first had the idea of "fortifying body and mind" of the nation's callow youth is one Miss A Cuff, a trained chef whose efforts to combat poor childhood diets predate those of the celebrity chef by nearly a century.
Records from the Schools Board of the City of Bradford show that in 1907 a small band of campaigners dedicated themselves to reversing what was seen as the "physical deterioration" of young children and teenagers.
Their concern was malnutrition among working-class Edwardian children rather than the epidemic of obesity among the modern youth.
But as Oliver launches his campaign this week for more spending to transform current meals he describes as "mostly rubbish", it seems he is fighting a long-standing battle.
A 1907 report,The Course of Meals Given to Necessitous Children, paid tribute to the "large amount of time and energy" given by Miss Cuff to creating a range of suitable menus.
"The problem it was desired to solve was that of providing a good variety of two-course dinners, which should be practical as regards their preparation and serving, should be up to a certain standard as regards the proportion of protein and fat, would cost between 1d and 1½d and would be enjoyed by the children," it said.
The parallels with Oliver's Feed Me Better project, which coincides with a four-programme television series charting his efforts to overhaul the menus in a London comprehensive, are legion. From the initial rejection by the children of the revised fare (porridge and treacle in 1907, leek-topped pizzas in 2005), to the problems of cooking meals within the set budget (1d in 1907, 37p in 2005), the logistical problems are largely identical.
But more importantly, school meals provided an unlikely political battleground for their respective eras.
At the turn of the last century, campaigners concerned about the nation's physical state in the aftermath of the Boer War persuaded a new Liberal government to introduce the 1906 Education (Provision of Meals) Act that invented school dinners.
Some 98 years on, Oliver is at the head of a new effort to convince ministers not only to end the dominance of burgers, pizzas, fizzy drinks and chips in school canteens but more ambitiously to persuade them to raise the per capita cost of each meal by almost a third to the princely sum of 50p.
The chef once derided for his image as a professional "geezer" and his advertising contract with Sainsbury's but more recently lauded for his project to train jobless youngsters at his London restaurant, Fifteen accused the Government yesterday of failing to encourage schools to improve meals by increasing the £1.3bn school dinners budget in line with inflation over the past five years.
"We need to think about having the junk banned over a three-year period," Oliver said on BBC1's Breakfast with Frost programme. "The Government needs to readjust the money that [schools] already have. I've seen paediatricians in the last few months who have told me this is the first generation of kids expected to die before their parents because of long-term health and diet-related problems."
The chef wants a return to an era when food was prepared in each school by trained staff, pointing out that the number of dinner ladies has halved in the past two decades to 120,000.
"If you think about 20 years ago, most of the food was regional, most of the food was cooked on site and they had double the amount of dinner ladies," he said. "Now it's an accountant's dream to have these pre-portioned, processed horrible things that our kids have become used to. And the problem is most of them eat these kinds of food every day, or very regularly, at home anyway."
Ministers, apparently aware of the political importance of school meals, announced plans last week to remove fatty and sugary processed food from school menus. Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Education, unveiled guidelines for the nutritional value of meals and said parents would have more say in what their children eat.
Both Oliver and the Local Authorities Caterers Association have warned that instant improvements in the quality of meals are impossible without extra funding. Despite the 37p cost of the food in each meal, the average price charged for a school dinner in England stands at £1.37 almost four times the price of the ingredients.
But the Government has yet to be convinced to loosen the purse strings. A spokesman for the Department for Education said the Government did not recognise Oliver's 37p figure for the cost of a school meal and that no central budget was set for providing food in schools. A new "food strategy" paper is due to be released by the department this spring.
The fight to improve the diet of youngsters is a grinding war against the poor value foods of the day, according to Oliver and his predecessors.
The celebrity chef whose Channel 4 documentary Jamie's School Dinners, chronicling his labours in the kitchens of Kidbrooke Comprehensive in south-east London, begins this week pointed out that when his new menus were first served they met with almost universal disapproval.
It was only when wet weather prevented pupils from fleeing to the local chip shop that the meals were sampled and rapidly gained popularity.
The menus, including fresh meat supplied by the upscale department store Harvey Nichols at a cheaper cost than processed meat from a catering wholesaler, are now being used in 80 other schools controlled by the London borough of Greenwich.
History indicates that problems with weaning youngsters off their unhealthy diet or table manners is not a new phenomenon. The Bradford schools project in 1907, which involved 40 children, tells how schoolmasters introduced tablecloths and flowers in the expectation that the impoverished pupils would "respond to orderly and decent surroundings".
The result was vigorous complaints that the cloths were made "dirty" by the children's clothing.
The report continued: "Breakfast consisted every day of oatmeal porridge with milk and treacle. I ascertained from the children that only one of them was in the habit of eating porridge, and he was a Scotch child.
"At the first breakfast, 13 of them refused to eat it; the next day there were only two, and from that day it was eaten and enjoyed by all. A more satisfactory breakfast, from the food value point of view, probably cannot be given for the money."
Despite undertakings from school boards across the country, notably London and Birmingham, to provide free meals for impoverished children from 1906, it was only in the 1944 Education Act that local authorities were obliged to provide school meals. The law ushered in the golden age of the school dinners with such wholesome offerings as Spam fritter, corned beef, mashed potatoes, stewed prawns and spotted dick.
Experts point out, however, that fond memories of school age culinary experiences are rare. Frances Bissell, a food writer and consultant, said: "My recall is of nearly being put off food altogether. What you were offered at primary school in the Fifties or Sixties lumpy custard, congealed gravy, mashed swede or turnip with bits of stalk in it discouraged you from eating. What Jamie Oliver is doing is impressive. He seems genuinely angry about what he has found in these schools and he is right. The problem is that what children eat needs to be made part of their educational experience, part of their lessons."
Ministers are also being asked to consider introducing an American practice of using school gardens to grow produce that is then eaten by the pupils who help to cultivate it.
In the meantime, past experience indicates that even persuading children to sit down to a bowl of noodle soup with winter greens in the canteen is only half the battle of reforming their eating habits. Oliver politely referred to the "knock-on effects" of convenience foods and the problems faced by working parents in having the time to produce a healthy meal.
Educationalists in Bradford 98 years ago were more direct in their assessment of his predecessor and the obstacles she faced. Their report on Miss Cuff's efforts concluded: "On these recipes, she has expended much thought and the success of them depends on careful attention to detail.
"It is true that many of the meals suggested are not such as one is accustomed to find in the ordinary cottage home and it might be objected that some of them involve too much thought and time.
"It would seem, however, that if such be the case, the fault lies with the upbringing of, and with the conditions under which many of the people live, rather than with the recipes."
SCHOOL DINNERS PAST AND PRESENT
1900s
Breakfast: Oatmeal porridge and bread and margarine or dripping with hot milk. Also served: wholemeal currant loaf and an egg.
1960s and 70s
Lunch: Fish and tomato casserole, boiled potatoes and peas; shepherd's pie with carrots and cabbage. Desert: Prunes and custard; steamed chocolate pudding
1980s and 90s
Lunch: Pizza, chips and coleslaw; chicken dinosaurs, chips and beans; pasta bake, jacket potato; cheese and egg salad. Desert: Jelly and cream; strawberry mousse; fresh fruit; yoghurt
The Noughties
Lunch: Chicken with chipolata, potatoes and broccoli or peas; roast lentil layer with potatoes and peas; ham and coleslaw jacket potato with vegetables or salad; egg and cheese salad. Desert: Chocolate and orange sponge; fresh fruit cup; yoghurt; biscuit with fruit juice or milk
Source: City of Bradford Education Committee Report 1907/Local
Authority Caterers' Association
School dinners: a recipe for disaster?
Jamie Oliver argues schools should not serve junk food, but says it's impossible to provide nutritious meals for 37p. It is the latest attack in a long battle over the feeding of children, reports Cahal Milmo
21 February 2005
Each of the diners was seated at a table decorated with a cloth and flowers. Their meal of porridge and wholemeal bread was prepared within a meagre budget but the aim was laudable: "To achieve a balance of protein and fat to fortify body and mind".
Behind this project lay a visionary chef, widely seen as ahead of her culinary era by dedicating effort not to exciting the tastebuds of monied gourmands but those of the nation's children at a time of rising anxiety at the state of their nutritional health.
It may sound like an appraisal of Jamie Oliver's high-profile crusade to improve school meals after spending a month working in the kitchens of a London comprehensive.
But the cook who first had the idea of "fortifying body and mind" of the nation's callow youth is one Miss A Cuff, a trained chef whose efforts to combat poor childhood diets predate those of the celebrity chef by nearly a century.
Records from the Schools Board of the City of Bradford show that in 1907 a small band of campaigners dedicated themselves to reversing what was seen as the "physical deterioration" of young children and teenagers.
Their concern was malnutrition among working-class Edwardian children rather than the epidemic of obesity among the modern youth.
But as Oliver launches his campaign this week for more spending to transform current meals he describes as "mostly rubbish", it seems he is fighting a long-standing battle.
A 1907 report,The Course of Meals Given to Necessitous Children, paid tribute to the "large amount of time and energy" given by Miss Cuff to creating a range of suitable menus.
"The problem it was desired to solve was that of providing a good variety of two-course dinners, which should be practical as regards their preparation and serving, should be up to a certain standard as regards the proportion of protein and fat, would cost between 1d and 1½d and would be enjoyed by the children," it said.
The parallels with Oliver's Feed Me Better project, which coincides with a four-programme television series charting his efforts to overhaul the menus in a London comprehensive, are legion. From the initial rejection by the children of the revised fare (porridge and treacle in 1907, leek-topped pizzas in 2005), to the problems of cooking meals within the set budget (1d in 1907, 37p in 2005), the logistical problems are largely identical.
But more importantly, school meals provided an unlikely political battleground for their respective eras.
At the turn of the last century, campaigners concerned about the nation's physical state in the aftermath of the Boer War persuaded a new Liberal government to introduce the 1906 Education (Provision of Meals) Act that invented school dinners.
Some 98 years on, Oliver is at the head of a new effort to convince ministers not only to end the dominance of burgers, pizzas, fizzy drinks and chips in school canteens but more ambitiously to persuade them to raise the per capita cost of each meal by almost a third to the princely sum of 50p.
The chef once derided for his image as a professional "geezer" and his advertising contract with Sainsbury's but more recently lauded for his project to train jobless youngsters at his London restaurant, Fifteen accused the Government yesterday of failing to encourage schools to improve meals by increasing the £1.3bn school dinners budget in line with inflation over the past five years.
"We need to think about having the junk banned over a three-year period," Oliver said on BBC1's Breakfast with Frost programme. "The Government needs to readjust the money that [schools] already have. I've seen paediatricians in the last few months who have told me this is the first generation of kids expected to die before their parents because of long-term health and diet-related problems."
The chef wants a return to an era when food was prepared in each school by trained staff, pointing out that the number of dinner ladies has halved in the past two decades to 120,000.
"If you think about 20 years ago, most of the food was regional, most of the food was cooked on site and they had double the amount of dinner ladies," he said. "Now it's an accountant's dream to have these pre-portioned, processed horrible things that our kids have become used to. And the problem is most of them eat these kinds of food every day, or very regularly, at home anyway."
Ministers, apparently aware of the political importance of school meals, announced plans last week to remove fatty and sugary processed food from school menus. Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Education, unveiled guidelines for the nutritional value of meals and said parents would have more say in what their children eat.
Both Oliver and the Local Authorities Caterers Association have warned that instant improvements in the quality of meals are impossible without extra funding. Despite the 37p cost of the food in each meal, the average price charged for a school dinner in England stands at £1.37 almost four times the price of the ingredients.
But the Government has yet to be convinced to loosen the purse strings. A spokesman for the Department for Education said the Government did not recognise Oliver's 37p figure for the cost of a school meal and that no central budget was set for providing food in schools. A new "food strategy" paper is due to be released by the department this spring.
The fight to improve the diet of youngsters is a grinding war against the poor value foods of the day, according to Oliver and his predecessors.
The celebrity chef whose Channel 4 documentary Jamie's School Dinners, chronicling his labours in the kitchens of Kidbrooke Comprehensive in south-east London, begins this week pointed out that when his new menus were first served they met with almost universal disapproval.
It was only when wet weather prevented pupils from fleeing to the local chip shop that the meals were sampled and rapidly gained popularity.
The menus, including fresh meat supplied by the upscale department store Harvey Nichols at a cheaper cost than processed meat from a catering wholesaler, are now being used in 80 other schools controlled by the London borough of Greenwich.
History indicates that problems with weaning youngsters off their unhealthy diet or table manners is not a new phenomenon. The Bradford schools project in 1907, which involved 40 children, tells how schoolmasters introduced tablecloths and flowers in the expectation that the impoverished pupils would "respond to orderly and decent surroundings".
The result was vigorous complaints that the cloths were made "dirty" by the children's clothing.
The report continued: "Breakfast consisted every day of oatmeal porridge with milk and treacle. I ascertained from the children that only one of them was in the habit of eating porridge, and he was a Scotch child.
"At the first breakfast, 13 of them refused to eat it; the next day there were only two, and from that day it was eaten and enjoyed by all. A more satisfactory breakfast, from the food value point of view, probably cannot be given for the money."
Despite undertakings from school boards across the country, notably London and Birmingham, to provide free meals for impoverished children from 1906, it was only in the 1944 Education Act that local authorities were obliged to provide school meals. The law ushered in the golden age of the school dinners with such wholesome offerings as Spam fritter, corned beef, mashed potatoes, stewed prawns and spotted dick.
Experts point out, however, that fond memories of school age culinary experiences are rare. Frances Bissell, a food writer and consultant, said: "My recall is of nearly being put off food altogether. What you were offered at primary school in the Fifties or Sixties lumpy custard, congealed gravy, mashed swede or turnip with bits of stalk in it discouraged you from eating. What Jamie Oliver is doing is impressive. He seems genuinely angry about what he has found in these schools and he is right. The problem is that what children eat needs to be made part of their educational experience, part of their lessons."
Ministers are also being asked to consider introducing an American practice of using school gardens to grow produce that is then eaten by the pupils who help to cultivate it.
In the meantime, past experience indicates that even persuading children to sit down to a bowl of noodle soup with winter greens in the canteen is only half the battle of reforming their eating habits. Oliver politely referred to the "knock-on effects" of convenience foods and the problems faced by working parents in having the time to produce a healthy meal.
Educationalists in Bradford 98 years ago were more direct in their assessment of his predecessor and the obstacles she faced. Their report on Miss Cuff's efforts concluded: "On these recipes, she has expended much thought and the success of them depends on careful attention to detail.
"It is true that many of the meals suggested are not such as one is accustomed to find in the ordinary cottage home and it might be objected that some of them involve too much thought and time.
"It would seem, however, that if such be the case, the fault lies with the upbringing of, and with the conditions under which many of the people live, rather than with the recipes."
SCHOOL DINNERS PAST AND PRESENT
1900s
Breakfast: Oatmeal porridge and bread and margarine or dripping with hot milk. Also served: wholemeal currant loaf and an egg.
1960s and 70s
Lunch: Fish and tomato casserole, boiled potatoes and peas; shepherd's pie with carrots and cabbage. Desert: Prunes and custard; steamed chocolate pudding
1980s and 90s
Lunch: Pizza, chips and coleslaw; chicken dinosaurs, chips and beans; pasta bake, jacket potato; cheese and egg salad. Desert: Jelly and cream; strawberry mousse; fresh fruit; yoghurt
The Noughties
Lunch: Chicken with chipolata, potatoes and broccoli or peas; roast lentil layer with potatoes and peas; ham and coleslaw jacket potato with vegetables or salad; egg and cheese salad. Desert: Chocolate and orange sponge; fresh fruit cup; yoghurt; biscuit with fruit juice or milk
Source: City of Bradford Education Committee Report 1907/Local
Authority Caterers' Association
