school dinner rebellion. BY PARENTS!

[Steve]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/5357136.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/5349392.stm

Whats everyone's opinion on this? I think they are being irresponsible parents. They are putting their kids on a one-way trip to heart disease. People wrote in to Look North BBC regional news last night, and this was the general opinion.

The crap these kids eat on a daily basis was demonstrated last night by Jamie Oliver himself, the demonstration of him chucking chips on a massive sheet, then mixing it with coke and gravy and crisps etc. The amount of fat, E numbers and additives is shocking. Then the school takes an independant pro-active approach, and the parents go mad! You'd think they'd be happy.

So what if little Tyrone doesn't like eating his greens? He'd better get used to it! "Tastes like cardboard" yeah . . because they've been eating additives and artificial flavours for so long, they dont know what real food tastes like! I bet all they eat at home is junk too . . . turkey twizzlers and chips every day. And the mum's excuse? "we haven't got time to cook a proper meal" or "Tyrone wont eat that stuff <salad>". Well they've somehow got time to take 2 hours out of their days to go and buy dinners for 100's of kids! When I was a lad (and i'm only 20!) I was made to eat my vegetables and salads and fruit. And I have grown into a relatively healthy adult. God knows what'd have happened to me if i had eaten nothing but crisps and turkey twizzlers.

The parents reckon its about the quality of the food on the new menu . . . but i dont think these parents will be happy until CHIPS are back on the school menu, and Tyrone is happy.

I'd be ashamed to live in Rotherham with this going on. And one of the letters sent to Look North was from someone in Rotherham, saying just this.

 

[Slogger]

i totally agree with you the parents are being fools

i know some younguns that would go into a hissy fit if you gave them carrots etc

 

[Thermo]

i agree, parents need horse whipping. Intresting to see they all shut up after they were called n to the school for a meeting. (wonder what was said) I listened to it on jeremy vine on radio 2. the local chip shop owner said they should have the freedom of choice....anything to do with his profits by any chance?

We grow all our own veg, the meat comes from a local butcher and we dont use any ready meals or packet crap. It doesnt take any longer to cook, and my teenage daughter can taste the difference if we use stuff from a different butcher. Our 15 month old has never had a jar of processed baby food, she eats what we eat. The first time we sat down for a roast with a chicken from the butchers after we stopped getting supermarket meat, the 15 year old even noticed the difference then. feed your kids crap if you want, but your not doing them any favours.

 

[big-all]

i normaly sit on the fence

buuuttt when i saw it on the tv i just couldnt belive what i was seeing

i just couldnt belive how stupid grown adults can be

 

[securespark]

Are they round the corner from your shop????

Big all: 'tis better to sit on the fence than pass food through it........

 

[Steve]

Are they round the corner from your shop????

not quite "round the corner" about 2 miles away. These mums ought to go get a life. Fancy asking the chippy owner what he thought of it. He's hardly going to say he thinks its a joke, is he??? Then again, he probably thinks he's dishing up nutritious healthy meals from his deep fat fryer.

Having worked in Rotherham for nearly 2 years, and been on the recieving end of numerous customer complaints, I have learned that this sort of behaviour is typical of Rotherham people. Rather than go and talk to the headteacher in the first place, they go and do something like this to attract attention, because they think nothing will get done otherwise. Same in our shop. They go straight to customer services and "grass us up" because they think then everyone in the shop will get a rollocking. Truth is, they ring us, and we just agree to everything they say, and nothing gets done. The beauty of it. More would get done if they actually spoke to our manager - he's a nice man, he doesn't bite!

Its just childish IMHO.

 

[keyplayer]

The links don't actually go into details of the new menus though do they? It's possible the chef doesn't have a clue. Seems to me that the real argument is over the reduced lunch breaks rather than the food. There's nothing wrong with well cooked fish and chips or baked potatoes or salad sandwiches. Or black pudding for that matter. (OP).

 

[Richardp]

If they don't eat it at dinner time they should be sent to bed and have it served up for breakfast!! if they're hungry they'll eat it.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Keyplayer is right - the biggest single problem is the reduced time allowed for lunch. 30 minutes is simply not enough for the children to queue for their food, eat it at a sensible pace, go to the loo etc.

In France the break is 3 or 4 times as long.

Of course there will be children who rebel against the food, but equally, if the stories from last year are true, there are some who end up rebelling against the food they get at home....

 

[Thermo]

im sure the schools thought it all through

 

[Nige F]

Little Tyrone ....wasn`t there a song about the green stools of Tyrone , or was it hills

 

[eggplant]

My opinion is that if school meals were decent (as well as being good for you) then there wouldnt be a problem....

The children aren't eating what the school provide in the cafeteria because they don't like the quality of the food.

School dinners have ALWAYS been crap ! as long as I remember anyway, thats why we all went to the chippy! Cant say as its done me any harm, and looking back, the slop the school served was much better then the slop I was served whilst serving our Queen and Country for 12 years.....
I do agree that 30 mins is certainly not enough time for a kids lunch break.

 

[hermes]

I suppose these are the kind of parents who will feed their own kids whatever they wish to eat. Not fair on the kids really but the parents could do with educating about nutrition. It sounds like the school is progressive and is trying to improve the performance of the kids but these women don't understand that. I'm sure that if left unchecked it would fizzle out as the women would get bored with it, but I hope the meeting with the headteacher has helped them to understand what is going on.

At my younger son's primary school all the menus have changed for the better and the new head has introduced strict rules about what is allowed in packed lunches. At my elder son's comp. the menus have changed, the vending machines have been re-stocked with healthier items and anyone below 6th year is now prevented from leaving school grounds during breaks to fill up on junk at the local fast-food outlets.

I am completely in favour of this new regime and feel that it is long overdue and it's a spity that it took a tv series to shame the govt into doing something about it.

 

[eggplant]

The thing is, if fed ONLY on "healthy food" I too would look elsewhere for "yummys", and so maybe this plan will have an overall negative effect..?

 

[hermes]

The thing is, if fed ONLY on "healthy food" I too would look elsewhere for "yummys", and so maybe this plan will have an overall negative effect..?

As will most kids, but the point is that many kids hardly have any healthy food in their diet and it is these kids that will benefit from even a small increase in fruit & veg consumption, for example. For the kids that already get a balanced diet then this won't make much difference to them as they are already used to healthy food. It is accepted that many kids will still have a poor quality breakfast (if any) and a poor quality tea. No-one is suggesting that kids should be fed "ONLY" on healthy food.