Give me a child...
Today’s food manufacturers set a lot of store by the old proverb about mind control
What’s the difference between a celebrity chef and the Government? One cares about our kid’s health and the other doesn’t - and it’s the chef in the form of Jamie Oliver who’s standing astride the moral high ground.
Five years ago the Government published a report on children’s health (National Diet & Nutrition Survey) which found they are developing deadly adult diseases for the first time in our evolution and face dramatically increased risks of dying from such things as heart disease, cancer and diabetes as they enter adulthood. The cause is lack of fresh fruit and veg and the dominance of saturated animal fat, animal protein and cholesterol, together with sugar, salt and over-processed foods. Amongst the worst offenders are school meals.
What did the Government do about it? They told children to exercise more! Oh, and floated the idea of a bit of voluntary regulation amongst food manufacturers - which usually translates as no regulation. And was it a success? Jamie Oliver was almost incoherent with rage when he recently looked at school meals. Some he couldn’t even identify and he described what was on offer as wilful neglect.
The product that really stoked his disgust was Bernard Matthews’ Turkey Twizzler - about 34 per cent turkey meat, the remainder being fat, damaging hydrogenated fat, salt, sugar and god knows what else. Oliver wanted to bomb the factory that produced it. It’s probable he felt similarly about the same company’s Turkey Dinosaurs, with 39 per cent turkey content. Fish Rocket was another cracker with 35 per cent fish content and then usual battery of fat, water and E numbers.
Oliver feels almost as incensed by that other staple - the chicken nugget. On the Jamie’s School Dinners website there’s a cartoon of the man responsible - a crazed Frankenstein character who’s bent on destroying the human race. Hard to argue with, really!
The obvious causes of this collapse in child nutrition are privatisation, contracting to the lowest bidder and the fact that the budget for a school meal is just 45p. But there is another, more closet reason, and it’s the way that organisations producing some of the most damaging foods have infiltrated themselves into schools and actually influence the school curriculum.
Take the inventor of the factory-farmed Turkey Twizzler, Bernard Matthews Plc. It has had a presence in schools for years with its Zone Crazy promotional packages and its latest little wheeze is the Science Zone, aimed at local authorities and contract caterers. Not the latest scientific evidence on diet and health but prizes - lots of them, to keep the BM name in front of kids. How does the company excuse using such propaganda to promote food with twice the recommended fat level? ‘There’s no such thing as an unhealthy food!’
Fortunately, Scotland is not so easily seduced and have elbowed Mr Matthew’s Twizzlers, burgers and nuggets from at least 12 LAs, accusing England of giving manufacturers an easy ride. The education department has no plans to reform school dinners and you can’t get much easier than that.
McDonald’s saw the advantage of pushing fat-laden burgers to kids eons ago and in the famous McLibel court case was found to have traded on their gullibility. It’s much more subtle now and McDonald’s education service is involved in ‘teacher development and curriculum support’. This involves placing 300 teachers a year in its restaurants for first-hand experience and to develop case studies to take back to school with them.
There are specially produced materials for use in key stage one to A level and all have links to McDonald’s restaurants ‘to help extend the experience’. Food technology teachers are offered first hand insights into how the company plans new products and promotions and thousands of students do their work experience at McDonald’s. Company CD-ROMs are even used in maths and science classes - all about building new restaurants. And that’s before you even get on to the use of free burger vouchers in schools, which were all the rage once.
The most influential of all is the Meat & Livestock Commission which actually helps devise the Food Technology curriculum, encourages projects on such delights as sausages, burgers and pizzas and pushes meat at every opportunity. It too has become much more subtle and includes masses of healthy eating advice - healthy so long as it includes meat. Despite the fact that veggie kids are leaner and tend to be healthier than meat-eating kids, it perpetuates the belief that meat is essential and without it you risk damaging your health - ‘If meat is excluded from the diet or the intake is cut back, certain individuals might be put at risk’. There are constant false allusions to iron deficiency anaemia in those who forsake meat and again the claim that there are no good and bad foods.
Animal protein and cholesterol can damage health and we know that animal fat is one of the most damaging ingredients of all. So here’s a little conundrum for you: with so many foods now claiming to be low fat, what’s happened to all the fat that has been discarded? It hasn’t been dumped in the North Sea. Disgracefully, it is institutionalised food where much of it finishes up. It is a national outrage with few prospects of meaningful change. GAP will just have to go on increasing the waist size of its children’s clothes and parents will continue to face the prospect of witnessing their children die before they do.