Over the last couple of days there has been a call from ministers to ban packed lunches completely in schools.
This call came in response to ideas that unhealthy packed lunches are contributing to obesity in children and hopes to stop children snacking on chocolate and fizzy drinks. This would effectively force parents to pay for school meals daily for their children ...
Throughout my time at school, my two brothers and I, had packed lunches. Every day our lunches would consist of a bottle of water or squash, a sandwich, a packet of crisps, sometimes a chocolate bar if we were lucky (and they were on offer at Tesco that week), but more often than not, a piece of fruit my Mother would ambitiously slip in, in the hope it wouldn't still be in the lunch box when we returned home.
I was lucky enough to have a Mother who made lunch for me every single day. I know not every child has this privilege but restricting packed lunches is not going to stop children from binging on chocolate and fizzy drinks; they'll simply do it when they get home. After a certain age, although parents still have a say in what their child eats, they can no longer control it. If you have your own money, you can potentially eat what you want, when you want. It's a right of passage, one of the first things you have control over in your life and every child undoubtedly kicks against health to begin with.
60% of children take a packed lunch to school; with such a large proportion why aren't the government questioning why so many people don't take up school dinners?
When I started secondary school, it was at the time of Jamie Oliver's Healthy School Dinners campaigns, thus the vending machines soon disappeared from my canteen, to everyone's horror. My canteen was already quite healthy though, it didn't need a publicity stunt from an arrogant TV chef to prompt them to look after their students.
I don't know what honestly went into the food (and in light of the horse meat scandal who ever really knows?) but I do remember that fast food was not a permanent feature. Fish and Chips were on the menu once a week only. Throughout the rest of the week there was a variety of meals on offer: curries, roasts, pasta, jacket potatoes, and there was always a range of baguettes and paninis. There was nothing wrong with these meals, they were perfectly edible and they were far from the horror stories my grandparents and parents had told me about, but I didn't eat them through choice. To be honest, I quite liked sandwiches and a full meal at lunch was a bit heavy when I knew there was always a freshly cooked meal for me at home in the evening.
Again not everybody has this privilege but this is what society has created and I fear it may be too late to change a large majority's ways. Fast food restaurants, the abundance of take away services, and most notably ready meals are the cause of obesity in children in Britain, not school packed lunches. In the same report, ministers also called for compulsory cookery lessons in schools ... not a bad idea, but it's not that people don't know how to cook, it's that they don't want to know. Society has bred parents who are too lazy to cook for their children when there are so many other options readily available and similarly, children don't want healthy meals when they could have a McDonalds. There was a time when children were seen and not heard, but today children have so many opinions and rights, and what's worse is that they know their rights as well. It's not child abuse to make your child eat their vegetables ... I have to say I've had many a meal that I wasn't particularly keen on but I've sat there and eaten it because I was hungry enough, and my Mother didn't pander to my tantrums from a young age. It never did me any harm ...
What concerns me most about this however is the price. I vaguely remember the price of my school canteen meals being around £3 per meal. Alone, this doesn't sound so bad but per week this would be £15 per child ...
Now, I'm one of three children, so this would mean £45 a week on school dinners. Over the course of the 40 weeks spent in school a year, a family such as mine with three children, would therefore be paying out £1,800 a year ... this prospect quite frankly disgusts me and I can categorically say a family such as my own would not be able to afford this.
Unless the government are going to come up with funding to provide these meals free, children will simply go without. Going without anything to eat at all will start an even more worrying downward spiral in terms of children's health. This campaign is being supported by Henry Dimbleby, an owner of a chain of restaurants. It's very easy for a wealthy bystander to stand on the outside looking in, and preach about health and judge other people's parenting.
Nobody has a right to dictate to parents how to bring up their children and in my opinion it will never work.
This idea is simply targeting decent working class families who don't qualify for government handouts. I can only be thankful that my family have not been subjected to these unfair pressures.
