you are what you eat

I've read that schools in England are jumping on the Jamie Oliver bandwagon and chucking out the turkey twizzlers in favour of healthier school dinners.

I was truly shocked when I first entered the dining hall at the Secondary Modern School in North London, where I was working four years ago.
Crammed with thousand students, all looking like penguins in their black uniforms and white collars, the ladies serving behind the counter looking like surgeons in their funny hats they were wearing.
The menu offered pizza, spaghetti with tomato sauce, french fries, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, sausages, burgers.
Never before have I seen such weird combination as pizza with fries, spaghetti on toast, burgers and spaghetti.
There were offered a few salads – and they were the same every day.
Beetroot, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, sweet corn – and all without any salad dressing. No vinegar, olive oil, herbs or anything.
The healthiest thing one could eat was a jacket potato with filling – either tuna, cottage cheese, grated cheese or baked beans.
There was one basket with apples, pears and bananas. But hardly ever did I see any student pick one of these.
For dessert they had jelly pudding, custard, cake with ice coating or chocolate or sweet yoghurt. And they had soft drinks, mostly coke, from the vending machines. When I asked the headteacher why they were allowed in a school, I was told that the salary of two teachers for one year could be paid because of the money they made from these machines. I was shocked.
I am not mentioning how much litter there was at the end of a school-day.
I was brave at the beginning, eating a jacket potato with fresh cheese and as a dessert a piece of fruit.
But I just got fed up after two weeks and took my lunch break with me from home.
The reason for this was also the size of the room. Far too small for such a huge crowd and as a teacher you had to box your way through to get anything to eat.
It was noisy and smelly (esp. in winter) and you were sitting on a tiny desk your neighbour’s elbows in your sides.
One could write a lot about the English “cuisine”.
It is just strange. Even the names are.
Believe it or not – a “spotted dick” is not a sexually transmitted disease, but a desert. And a “toad in a hole” is far from being a slimy creature but sausages in sort of batter.
English desserts are wonderful, though. I love trifles – and the lemon tarts are a treat.
But I do enjoy the Indian and Chinese takeaways.
And if you stay in England long enough and you are lucky to live in a family where traditional cooking is done, you start liking the Sunday roasts with three vegetables, you get used to the salads without vinegar and oil and you absolutlely love the sandwiches and crumpets soaked with butter.
But you will always miss the crusty brown bread, the freshly made salad with balsamico vinegar, garlic, herbs and styrian pumpkin oil.

So Jamie Oliver is doing a good job in the school kitchens –
but will they really be enough to bring about long-lasting change?
Families will have to change their eating habits, too.
As long as kids do not learn what broccoli is or how a fresh carrot tastes at an early age, nothing will change at all.
And, schools need to spend more money for dinners and – above all, forbid the installing of vending machines.

If Lord Nelson had not won the Battle of Trafalgar, you all would have better food and not just one brand of gravy for each meal.