Jamie Oliver will forever be remembered amongst some Brits for getting the beloved turkey twizzler banned from school lunches.
One of the best ever moments of food television was the time Jamie Oliver tried to shock kids out of their love of chicken nuggets with some slasher movie-esque imagery. It was high drama TV. He chopped up and minced all the gross bits of a chicken (lots of ewwws from the children) and chucked some breadcrumbs over them. I'm surprised he didn't go all in and slaughter a chicken in front of them too. He then asked the kids how many of them would still eat the chicken nuggets.
Except, he forgot one thing in his cunning plan: kids will be kids.
The result?
The kids enthusiastically confirmed that they would still eat the chicken nuggets. Jamie Oliver was devastated. God I love the honesty of kids. And chicken nuggets, for that matter.
I bring this up in light of New Zealand's own healthy lunches in schools programme -Ka Ora, Ka Ako- where it has been recently revealed by Stuff that thousands of free healthy lunches are rejected by students each week.
Even more disturbing, it has been reported that according to the Ministry of Education, no-one is responsible for counting the number of rejected lunches.
Now, talking about free meals in schools is almost intrinsically linked to talking about child poverty, and it is certainly the Children's Commissioner's view that free lunches in schools should be a birthright. Being against free school lunches must mean that you are pro child poverty, right?
But there's another angle to this: what if some children don't want these free lunches? And shouldn't this be an important part of the evaluation of such a programme? There is supposed to be an evaluation, by the way. But the fact it sounds like data on rejected lunches isn't being collected makes me think this isn't part of the evaluation (happy to be proven otherwise!).
Now, as far as food wastage goes, the programme is not a complete bust. The rejected lunches at least get donated. But the to-and-fro between Act's David Seymour and the Minister of Education Chris Hipkins is revealing.
David Seymour argues:
“If you’re responsible for sending out taxpayer money, then you’ve got a duty to measure its effectiveness, not just for the taxpayer, but for the kids...If you really care about them, and they’re sending back 500 uneaten lunches, you want to know why.”
Hipkins responded 'it would be “nanny-statish” for all schools or providers to monitor the number of uneaten lunches.'
“If David Seymour wants to be the lunch monitor in every primary and secondary school he's welcome to do that.”
Except....it kind of sounds like schools are already expected to play the role of lunch monitor. Here's the Ka Ora, Ka Ako guidance for schools to encourage participation in the programme.
Cards on the table here: I was a terribly fussy eater as a kid. I thank my parents for being pragmatic enough to concede that it was better for me to eat something for lunch that I chose, rather than nothing. So I find the guidance deeply and personally horrifying.
Rewarding positive eating behaviour? That doesn't sound particularly bad. But as a shameless teacher's pet, I really liked positive reinforcement and would feel bad if I didn't get it. I sure would have found it distressing if I had to not only perform well in class, but eat well during my lunch break too. Is it really the role of the teacher to enforce such personal lifestyle habits? There are so many opportunities in the course of an average school day to feel bad about yourself and that you're weird or dumb or wrong, do teachers really need to make lunchtime part of that experience too?
Or how about the suggestion that children be 'encouraged' to try new foods. Encourage sounds suitably benign. But not all kids would feel comfortable telling their teacher -the person of highest authority- that no, broccoli looks and smells awful and they will not be trying one bite.
And as for the expectation that children with packed lunches be forced to wait 10-15 minutes before tucking into their lovingly home-prepared meals they may prefer, well, that just sounds mean. That seems like a very deliberate attempt to make kids feel like their home brought meals are inferior.
I'm not even going to comment on the suggestion that "healthy food tastes better if you are hungry", but please imagine me silently tearing my hair out. Actually, I can't not comment: is...the guidance suggesting schools starve the children in order to trick them into thinking healthy food tastes nice?
There has got to be a place for agreeing child poverty and starving children is actually bad, but also wanting to know whether the free lunches programme is well targeted and working as intended. It seems like a pretty reasonable expectation before demanding the programme be rolled out universally.
And as for the guidance to encourage kids' participation in the programme? Sounds a bit nanny state-ish to me.