More gross school lunches
Sue K today released the results of the second Green Party School Food Survey, which paints a pretty scary picture of the food for sale to kids at school tuckshops - high fat, high sugar foods are the cheapest, most common staples. Sarah Crawford, an independent dietition, reviewed the results of the survey, calling them “scandalous” and saying:
There is little incentive for children to change their dietary habits as shown in both surveys because rolls and sandwiches are more expensive than the high fat and high sugar foods. It is interesting to note that the number of schools selling both muesli bars and yoghurt have slipped over the past year.
I don’t know what’s worse for school lunches - whale meat or a daily spread of pies, chips and sugar!
May 16th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Sure, I’d love to see schools being less lazy and providing kids with cheap, mass catered, cooked lunches prepared from local organic ingredients, but I think a study that relies on menus published on school’s websites, and doesn’t go as deep as dietary analysis, is of limited significance.
I wouldn’t read too much into the quantitative results of this study, especially since the sample size is very small (50 in the 2005 study, 37 in the 2006 study).
May 16th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Actually there were 54 in the 2006 study mugwump. 37 of the 50 from 2005 were used again and 17 other randomly selected schools were also used so that the results would be comparible, as it says in the results and background document.
And yes, of course it’s a small sample and it relies on schools publishing their menus, and luckily, lots of parents send their kids to school with healthy lunches, but lots also don’t. While it’s not comprehensive this survey certainly indicates that there are problems with the alternatives available for kids to buy. This is definitely one of a myriad of factors in the growing childhood obesity problem we are facing.
May 17th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
*thwap* you got me, frog. It was even mentioned in the next paragraph, how sloppy of me not to have noticed.
Anyway, I didn’t say that the qualititative findings of this study are necessarily bad, just that the numbers don’t mean an awful lot.
My other point is that there are lots of implicit assumptions about the dietary value of things like pies and sousage rolls going on here. Sure, we know they’re just selling crummy off the shelf pies laden with saturated fats and stuff, but there’s not really that much of a case you can make against a home-made pie with vegetable content, for instance. So, when you say “pie”, which one do you mean?
Going as far as dietary analysis would allow a study like this to be linked to concrete science and not just appealling to prevailing fad ideas about what is and is not good for you.
May 19th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Hi Frog,
As a parent who has struggled with the triple-pronged problem of budgetary restraints, dietary needs, and fussy children, my eventual solution was “I’ll buy the ingredients, you choose which of the items goes in your lunchbox, and I don’t want to hear about pocket money for the school canteen”
The caveat emptor for anyone wishing to copy my tough-love diet is that only one of my children has traversed college ( every day tuckshop), so the results of my personal longitudinal experiment won’t be complete until around 2014.
So far, of 3 children, none have starved or failed to eat lunch; and mostly, they pack fruit, a sandwich-type item, a biscuit or mueli/nutty bar. One child likes pies, but wouldn’t eat them every week (the novelty of two pies a year is what makes them edible, apparently…….. plus the Weevil & Bob connection)
There is some lunch-swapping (evidence: wrappers from things I’ve never heard of) but it’s been easy enough so far to have a low-preservative, high fresh-food intake. They all have water bottles, and one child has been found to have a caffeine intolerance, so fizzy drinks are off the menu.
They all have “chunky” friends who eat fast-food every week. This has been a bone of contention until very recently, when all 3 have realised that our low-tech, slow-food, fresh fruit & veg diet means they haven’t got the health problems some of their mates (12 - 16 years) experience. Organic and GE-free are goals in our household, and we acheive that intermittently. Buying local is easier to acheive, and brings tasty results.
Obesity in kids is not hard to avoid. It just takes a committment on the part of the parent who does the grocery shopping, not to buy junk. “Won’t power”, if you like.
Statistics on dietary habits in schools are built up one family at a time, and these habits can be broken one family at a time, if you really want a different outcome. Now when I send hummus, carrot sticks and celery to school on shared lunch days, the kids dive on that first (teachers tell me they miss out) - and these are the same classmates that eat junk food every Friday with their parents. They have developed a different attitude to vegies as a snack food.
I’m not a dietitician, but I have had friends who work in that field, so I’ve been exposed to more debates about food than most, I expect.
Just a few thoughts from the “coalface” of preventing childhood obesity!
cheers, katie
September 17th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
The school where I work has made a huge effort to eliminate junk food from the school canteen, with mixed results.
Many students now buy their junk foods of choice on the way to school, and no school can prohibit this. Many students arrive at school waiting for the canteen to open at 8am so that they can buy breakfast,usually a pie or two.
Short of banning the bringing to school of sweets and chips, (imagine the headache of trying to police such a policy in a school of more than 2000 students!) we have to acknowledge that schools cannot hope to override family habits that are reinforced by parents in the time students are not at school. We can but try.
September 17th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
banning junk food is relatively easy..susie
they have done it in british schools..
you just ban it..end of story..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 14th, 2007 at 10:13 am
“Junk food” isn’t in my dictionary, because it was printed in 1971. So I’ve attempted my own definition:
1. It has a strong, delicious flavour
2. Young people love it
3. Mum doesn’t make it, it is manufactured by a big firm
4. So women don’t have to spend hours preparing it
5. It is “ready to eat” straight out of the packet
6. The label doesn’t say it is a health food
7. Potatoes are junk food unless eaten raw, but bottled water isn’t, even though it is 100% water.
8. Sugar is, but not sweet fruits or honey.
9. It is easy to consume, has a long shelf life, needs no refrigeration
10. The main peddlers are KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut; NOT Pizza Express or Nando’s or Subway.
11. Codliver oil, full of fat, artificial additives and preservatives, is not junk because children hate it.
12.Instant coffee is, but ground coffee isn’t
The mortality rate among children who subsist entirely on home-grown and home-prepared “basic” foods is more than 20 times higher than it is among those who also eat junk food.
It looks like a bit of research is needed in the definition field!
June 14th, 2007 at 10:24 am
In short, I strongly suggest the meaningless term “junk food” be abandoned, and guidelines be regulated according to degree of refining, fat content, degree of saturation of the fat, sugar content, salt content, percentage of the foodstuff which has any nutrition value, presence of flavour enhancers, dyes, preservatives, etc, fortification with potentially harmful additives (e.g. iron to breakfast cereals, beveridges, yeast spreads and bread), and so on. Instead of simply a division between “what children choose to eat” and “what parents want them to eat”.