Trimming the fat: tackling obesity despite funding cuts

The UK has the highest rate of childhood obesity in Europe. A quarter of children are overweight or obese, and research by the government’s Foresight programme suggests that some 40 percent of Britons will be obese by 2025, if current trends continue.

Until recently, school food was part of the problem – deficient in some of the nutrients essential for healthy growth, but high in sugar, salt, and saturated fat.

In 2005, pioneering chef, and intransigent healthy school food advocate, Jamie Oliver, alongside the School Food Plan, helped to galvanise a change in approach that has since revolutionised school food provisions.

Additional funding from the DfE gave schools more scope to invest in better-quality ingredients and to improve kitchen facilities, while new mandatory nutritional standards were introduced across England’s primary and secondary schools.

But, mounting financial pressures on school budgets are putting the brakes on the school food revolution.

Eating Disorder Awareness Week

Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2017 takes place this year from 27 February to 5 March, and focusses on the importance of early intervention.

It’s common sense that the earlier an illness – be it physical or mental – is detected and treated, the sooner things are likely to improve. The challenge when it comes to eating disorders, is that individuals may not even realise they are at risk of developing a problem until it’s too late. So, how do we help people ask for support when they may not even know they need it?

What’s the worst that could happen?

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We’ve all seen the infamous Dr. Pepper advert – The one where the young boy goes to see the school nurse, his drink spills over the intercom system, and the entire school listens to part of their conversation. As the young boy walks out of the nurse’s office, the entire school is stood outside mocking him, and the slogan “Dr. Pepper, what’s the worst that could happen?” is displayed across the screen.

Celebrating Healthy Eating Week

To mark Healthy Eating Week, our blog this week focusses on what your school can do to get involved and offer ways to encourage pupils to eat a nutritious, balanced diet and become more active.

Eat the seasons

The issue in this wonderful country of ours is that in our supermarkets and greengrocers, there is such a massive choice of fruits and vegetables for sale that we can buy most fruits and veg all year round. We should really focus on purchasing seasonal vegetables and fruits and where possible, buy those grown in the UK.

Why eat the seasons?

There are a number of good reasons to eat more local, seasonal food:

• To reduce the energy (and associated CO₂ emissions) needed to grow and transport the food we eat.
• To avoid paying a premium for food that is scarcer or has travelled a long way.
• To support the local economy.
• To reconnect with nature’s cycles and the passing of time.

Most importantly though, eating seasonally ensures that food is eaten when it is most fresh, so it tends to be tastier and more nutritious.

The majority of the UK population grow up in urban areas with little or no awareness of when and where various foods are produced. Imports from around the world ensure that supermarket shelves look the same, week in week out.

Fruit and vegetables make up a large number of the foods that we should focus on, alongside meat and seafood for a balanced diet. When buying fruit and vegetables, we should be aware of the seasons for produce from Southern Europe – it’s better to eat oranges, peaches and kiwi fruit flown over from Spain or Italy, rather than those that have travelled much further from Africa, America or Australia.

There are a small number of fruits grown outside Europe that we can’t live without – bananas, pomegranates and passion fruit – though we suggest that these are enjoyed, in moderation, when UK and European fruit is relatively sparse.

At The Canny Kitchen, we do, however, think it’s wasteful to buy asparagus flown in from South America, or apples shipped in from New Zealand, when for many weeks or months of the year, you can feast on far superior UK versions – often at a lower cost financially, as well as environmentally.

Whenever a particular UK-produced ingredient goes out of season, you can guarantee that another delicious food has come back into season to tempt us all. Ultimately, eating seasonally is about enjoyment not abstinence. People who are interested in food quality and have an awareness of when certain ingredients are at their best will, quite naturally, end up eating more of the foods in season and less of those shipped half-way around the world.

Of course, even when a food is in season, its quality can vary dramatically. Food produced locally, such as that bought from a farmers’ market, is likely to be a lot fresher than its supermarket equivalent.

 Suggestions for schools

• Hold assemblies and/or classroom workshops to talk about seasonal fruits, vegetables, fish and meats (include fruit and vegetable displays with these and encourage pupils to research and undertake a project on foods that are local and seasonal).
• Plan an outing/class trip to a farmers’ market, farm shop or greengrocers and choose some seasonal fruits and vegetables to cook in school.
• Cook at least one savoury meal every month in school with each class, using some seasonal produce.
• Make jams and chutneys with older children, using seasonal fruits and vegetables.
• Grow herbs in classrooms and use in cooking and in special recipes such as one-pot meals, such as soups, stews and stir-fries.

 Recommended resources for schools

• Eat the Seasons <eattheseasons.co.uk>

This website lists foods that are in season now, shows ‘Seasonal Food of the Week’ and offers UK seasonal food information, tips and recipe ideas which are updated every week.

• BBC Good Food <http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/seasonal-calendar/all>

This website has a useful seasonal produce guide and a seasonality table.

 Brought to you by:

The Canny Kitchen, based in County Durham, provides a range of cookery workshops to schools in Durham, Sunderland, Gateshead and South Tyneside.

With over 30 years’ experience in the catering industry, including 25 years spent working in schools, The Canny Kitchen provides tailor-made, relaxed and inspiring cookery workshops – supplying all the equipment, ingredients and uniforms, but most importantly the knowledge and professional expertise needed to make every session a success.

The Canny Kitchen also offers healthy eating sessions and cookery demonstrations to pupils, as well as providing schools with guidance on menu planning and advice on achieving the Healthy Schools Award.

Food for Thought

“A hungry or emotional child cannot develop physically, mentally or emotionally. Healthy eating habits provide the optimum mental and physical health for children and, once established, last a lifetime.”

– Dr Yibo Wood, USA Government Department of Agriculture Nutritionist.

Childhood obesity is at an all-time high. New figures show that one in ten primary school starters are already obese at the young age of four or five, and twenty percent are obese by the time they leave primary school.

Experts warn of a disastrous end and have called for more PE lessons in the hope that more exercise is the resolution. Although it is proven that a stringent and effective physical education programme can have a positive effect on the health and wellbeing of pupils, perhaps the experts are ignoring a key factor in childhood obesity by proposing this as the most viable, if not only, plan of action – lack of knowledge.

Some may assume it is widely known that diet goes hand in hand with exercise for people attempting to lose weight; however, the evidence suggests that a lot of people, especially children, are unaware of the importance of nutrition, not only in battling obesity but in healthy physical and mental development. The way that children interact with food in their early years can build relationships with food that will stay with them for life.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom! Today, Thursday 5 March, is International School Meals Day. The annual event, managed by Children in Scotland and backed by organisations from all across the UK and USA, aims to raise awareness of the importance of the nutritional qualities of school meal programmes worldwide. All across the globe, children and adults in education will be celebrating food and healthy living in the education environment.

A few ways schools, organisations, governing bodies, catering companies and anyone with an interest can get involved include:

• Having an International Menu Day.
• Hosting food tasting sessions.
• Hosting internationally themed cooking activities.
• Dedicating lessons to healthy eating topics.
• Holding fund-raising activities for charities that support school feeding programmes in developing countries.

The scheme wants to foster healthy eating habits in schools, emphasise the connection between this and better learning and raise awareness of the good work of school feeding programmes and of the hunger and poverty issues they try to help as well as share the success stories of school meal programmes around the globe.

The scheme suggests that celebrating culture through food is an integral way of promoting healthy eating and learning,

“Food, like language, is an integral part of culture and many countries history and society rests on their food traditions. Families and communities often help children to make valuable connections between a culture and its food.”

Also, collaboration and sharing practice with other schools, not only for this annual event but throughout the rest of the year could prove helpful, if not invaluable, in tackling obesity and promoting optimum, healthy child development.

Ensuring the next generation of children possess all the knowledge needed to fully understand healthy eating and how they can be responsible for their future health, and the health of their own children, is integral in preparing them for later life. Cooking and eating is something that we do every day and it is too easy to become complacent and favour something quick and easy over something healthier and perhaps more challenging in the kitchen. I’m sure I speak for a lot of people when I say I wish I was taught more at a younger age about food, so that I might look forward to preparing myself an exciting meal, rather than it being a chore.

If we can make sure that children form positive life-long relationships with food, rather than ones detrimental to their health, then perhaps there is hope for a healthier and more flavoursome future for all.

So, why not get involved in International School Meals Day this year with a day full of making healthy food fun?

You can share your International School Meals Day ideas or events in the comments below and join the global #BigSchoolLunch twitter campaign by sharing your favourite dish or traditional school meals.

Click here for more information on The School Food Plan on TheSchoolBus.

Sources:

International School Meals Day

Children’s Food Trust

The Daily Mail