Great British Bake Off star Prue Leith says all children need lessons in how to eat healthily in order to fight obesity
We need to learn from countries like Finland where healthy meals are at the heart of school life, argues Prue Leith
A QUARTER of the UK’s population is obese.
A lot of rot is spoken about our guzzling vastly more than we did a generation or two ago.
In fact, overall, we’re eating less — in the 1950s the average Brit ate 100 calories more per day than we do now.
But back then just five per cent of Britons were overweight. That has now gone up to 63 per cent. This is the obesity paradox, we’re eating less as a fat nation than we did as a slim one.
There’s no mystery behind why people get fat. The combination of moving more and fighting the cold (keeping warm burns calories faster than running) kept our forebears slim.
Our food intake has been falling, but nowhere near fast enough to compensate for centrally heated houses and a sedentary lifestyle. Hence the obesity epidemic.
We aren’t going to go back to manual labour, no cars and unheated houses, so what to do?
For adults, the podgy horse has probably all but bolted. Almost two-thirds are overweight or obese and we grown-ups will not be told.
Our only hope is the next generation. And there we need to do everything we can.
Since the responsibility cannot be left to parents, we should start with schools. I used to think if we could teach just one generation of children to eat better, we’d have done it.
They would grow up with a preference for a healthy lifestyle, they’d indoctrinate their children and voilà! Problem solved.
But I hadn’t reckoned on the power of the contra-forces, the massive influence of food manufacturers with their genius for peddling the most delicious combinations of fat, sugar and salt, the rise of snacking culture, time spent on screens, the parsimony of governments with other priorities, and above all with the commendable stuff-that-for-a-game-of-soldiers attitude of the British citizen who likes his beer and chips, thanks very much.
I’ve been banging away boringly for 40 years about the dangers of not eating properly and I’ve seen excellent efforts made by schools and charities.
But it is clear that unless the campaigning and the incentives are kept up, a lot of backsliding will go on.
The best example of a government serious about health is probably Finland.
When I was chair of the School Food Trust, I went to see what a country holding the world record for heart disease was doing about it. The answer was — a lot.
They grasped that the problem was lack of activity, as well as diet.
They were rightly proud of their efforts in schools. The central planks of the Finnish policy are free school meals for everyone and teaching children to eat as part of the curriculum.
Bring back school matrons to monitor children's progress
Prue Leith
Lunchtime is a class, though it is expected to deliver its lessons in a relaxing and pleasurable atmosphere.
School restaurants (not “canteens”, you notice) are light, airy, nice places to be. The food is cooked from scratch in batches so it arrives fresh on the counter.
Lunchtime is used to teach more than just how to eat well. Students learn good manners and about other cultures.
The week I was there, one school was having an Italian week, with history, art and sports classes all going Italian.
That week’s menus were mushroom risotto, pasta alle vongole, pizza, Italian sausage stew (all with salad), cold Italian meats (salami, ham etc) and eggs, olives and hot potatoes.
Meal times were staggered to eliminate queues, with the children serving themselves, taking as little or as much as they liked, and eating it all. No pudding. They had milk or water to drink. Every child did a week’s work experience in the kitchen and took turns in laying the table and clearing up.
There was no choice (other than for special diets), but the menu changed daily, on a six-to-eight-week cycle.
The arguments for a no-choice but changing menu are logical. Children are very conservative — given a choice, they’ll eat what they know they like. The no-choice menu ensures they taste new things.
British school caterers often boast about the variety they offer, but they fail to mention that the majority of children eat pizza every day.
Part of the UK’s problem is that we see government intervention as nannying. I once tried to get Michael Gove to make learning to eat part of the school curriculum so that teachers would take it seriously.
He said the Tory party believed in choice, in parental responsibility, in the individual being accountable for his or her actions. I agree.
But damn it, we don’t let parents decide what’s on the maths curriculum. And since the State must pick up the bill for ill health, I think it has every right to insist on education to limit the risk.
Given how many obese adults started out as obese children, being serious about tackling obesity must mean landing schools with some of the responsibility.
By the time children finish primary school, those from the poorest households are now twice as likely to be obese as the richest. Obesity is not just about what food people can afford — it’s about habit.
Since the parents’ diet tends to be part of the problem, the best way to tackle this is in the classroom.
We all know green veg is better for you than chips. The problem is, many of us don’t like the taste, and the only way to get to like it is by trying it repeatedly.
Schools which signed up to the Soil Association’s Food for Life programme know that children can be taught to love vegetables — and the best way is to have them grow them, cook them and eat them.
It’s not the only way. As Finland has discovered, if adults are to make the right choices it needs to be made easy for them.
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We need enough sporting facilities, green spaces and playgrounds, for grown-ups as well as children.
And fresh food needs to be available, affordable and accessible as well as desirable.
It’s no good convincing someone veg is healthy and delicious if there isn’t a bus to the supermarket and the corner shop on the estate only stocks tins.
Matrons or health visitors should be reintroduced in schools to monitor every child’s progress.
And the health of their pupils must be discussed with parents, who will need to be involved in any plans to slim their children if they are overweight.
All of which means getting the Departments of Education, Health, Environment and Sport to work together, and the Treasury to cough up a shedload of money. What chance of that?