At least in England, where a few stiff upper lips are refusing to comply with school bans on junk food.
Five months after the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver succeeded in cajoling, threatening and shaming the British government into banning junk food from its school cafeterias, many schools are learning that you can lead a child to a healthy lunch, but you can’t make him eat.
The fancy new menu at the Rawmarsh School here?
“It’s rubbish,” said Andreas Petrou, an 11th grader. Instead, en route to school recently, he was enjoying a north of England specialty known as a chip butty: a French-fries-and-butter sandwich doused in vinegar.
“We didn’t get a choice,” he said of the school food. “They just told us we were having it.”
Now, I am all for healthy eating, I suppose. But you know, one of the really grand things about being 16 is being able to suck down french-fry sandwiches with nary a consequence. In fact, there are a lot things you can do as a young person that you cannot do as an adult. And vice versa. Whatever happened to reason? Moderation?
Seems to be lacking in a lot of debates. Take this one, for instance. Seems like the school lunches are going over a lot better in some places:
Schools that have tried to win students over appear to have fared better than those that impose bans, Professor Morgan said.
The Royal Docks Community School, a high school in Newham, south London, is one example. The school began gradually introducing menu changes last year, consulting parents, students and the local school district.
Within six weeks, said the head teacher, Sean McGrath, the cooks had reduced the use of cooking fat by 75 percent.
Imagine that.
Of course, not everyone is happy with that approach, either. Our hero with the french-fry sandwich has other ideas:
But here in Rotherham, Andreas Petrou insists that no amount of explaining will convince him that a French fry sandwich is not a decent meal. If confronted with the school food, he said, he will do what all his friends do: gather as much bread as he can, “put half an inch of butter on each slice,” and call it lunch.
Excellent.
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