More on healthy food horror

Comments

9 responses to “More on healthy food horror”

1. 

   Sumi

   Sep 15, 2026 11:40 AM

   “… which are historically not English in the slightest.” Neither are curries. But fish-and-chip shops now sell curries and kebabs just to get young people through the door.
2. 

   Ian Hargreaves

   Sep 15, 2026 11:46 AM

   Why is the voice of Cat Stevens singing “my lady D’Arbanville” going round my head? Must be the chickpeas
3. 

   Jim Baerg

   Sep 15, 2026 11:56 AM

   I would hope there are non-curry options. I would expect at least some of the students to share my intense dislike of spicy-hot.
4. 

   NinetyEight

   Sep 15, 2026 11:59 AM

   In my experience of institutional food in the USA ‘delicious’ is not to be expected. Our college offerings, for one example, undoubtedly ticked all the nutritional boxes but were entirely flavorless. We tended to rely on the salad bar and self-serve ice cream. Those were the two things that could not be made worse. And we looked forward to times we could get fast food burgers and greasy pizza. Any lentils, were they served, would be stodgy, unappetizing, and not resembling any Indian dish.

   Perhaps the UK institutions can do better.
5. 

   Piglet

   Sep 15, 2026 11:59 AM

   Lentils and chickpeas are just legumes that grow in warm climates. We’ve been eating cold-climate legumes in the UK since forever, because medieval peasants sure as hell were not able to afford meat every day. (This is why English has Germanic names for animals and Romance names for their respective meats.) Personally I think “fried, battered or breadcrumb-coated food” is pretty disgusting but I’m in a minority.
6. 

   Piglet

   Sep 15, 2026 12:00 PM

   Jim Baerg: most Indian food isn’t spicy-hot, especially when it’s for kids.
7. 

   What a Maroon

   Sep 15, 2026 12:47 PM

   As long as there are options for kids with allergies to legumes.
8. 

   iknklast

   Sep 15, 2026 12:50 PM

   As long as there are options for kids with allergies to legumes.

   I imagine this is just a shorthand for healthy foods; I don’t imagine anyone would expect to serve the kids anything but lentils and chickpeas! There are so many healthy (and tasty) dishes out there, it would be silly to have no options.
9. 

   Artymorty

   Sep 15, 2026 1:05 PM

   Shifting school cafeteria meals towards healthier ingredients is perfectly decent in principle. It’s possible there could be problems if the policy change isn’t implemented properly: say, anodyne, utilitiarian recipes that fulfill the nutrient requirements but leave the tastebuds unmoved. That could end up teaching kids to associate healthy food with bad food, possibily undermining their health in the long term. But that’s not a guaranteed outcome; it’s just one possible negative outcome if the policy isn’t implemented well.

   There is, however, a detail of the new policy that I don’t agree with, even in principle: the personal lunchbox inspection part. I think that’s a bridge too far. If they’re bringing their own food to eat on their own lunch break, that’s their own food on their own time. And if they’re leaving the campus to eat food, they should be free to eat whatever they want on their time.

   I guess it’s the diffence between a policy that “nudges” and one that “forces”. Here, look at the healthy eating options we’re making easily available to you is a very good nudge. Stop and let us search your backpack for contraband food is a forceful push, and I think it’s the wrong tool for this case.

   I can sort-of see a policy of discouraging brought-in food, particularly for very-young children for whom free lunch is already universally provided by UK schools. But even strong discouragement begins to look less reasonable as kids get older and many start having to pay for lunch.

   It’s been reported that some parents are “bribing” their kids with candy bars in their lunch boxes, and that’s not good, but the solution to that specific problem might be simply stronger social messaging to discourage the problem, and maybe as a final resort, not allowing candy bars — just candy bars — to be consumed on campus.

   There’s talk in some parts of banning lunch boxes altogether — forcing kids to eat only what the schools give them during the day — because the schools “can’t police” what the kids are being given to eat by their parents.

   Well, no, they can’t. I’m sympathetic to the schools to some degree, but I’m also wary of this kind of logic: it’s not the government’s job to strictly police the parent-child relationship in that way. That there is the kind of overreach that rankles, and it bleeds into similar school policies around schools keeping parents out of decisions about kids’ pronouns, for example.

   It’s framed as protecting kids — what could possibly go into an unsanctioned private lunchbox but foul candy and junk — in the same way that the pronoun argument says how could a parent possibly have anything but bad motives to override a child’s desired pronoun uses. It’s possible in both cases the parent’s have good or bad motives, but it’s outside the purview of the schools to cut the parents out of the decision altogether.

   The policy appears to be vague in how brought-lunch inspection should be implemented. As is typical with British written policy, it’s mostly “guidances” and “recommendations” with few strict orders. That’s a small relief, because I can imagine there will be many cases where the teachers and school administrators want the room to give certain kids in certain circumstances some flexibility. Say, a kid who’s ineligible for free lunch, can’t afford the cafeteria food, whose home-life is too disorganized for anything more than throwing some leftover frozen pizza into a bag to eat at lunch. We all know he’s not getting an ideal lunch, and surely he’s already being reminded of that by the healthy-eating posters plastered all over the school, but seizing his pizza slice at the school gate probably won’t make him suddenly bloom into a chickpea-loving vegetarian who eats two apples a day and keeps close tabs on his calorie and macro intake.

   (That kid sounds not entirely like a young me!)