Jamie Oliver's dinners - remember Alf Tupper?

It seems a bit unfair to criticise Jamie Oliver for the fact that kids don't want to eat healthier food. Headlines like ‘Kids 'Sick' Of Healthy School Meals' and ‘Children find Jamie Oliver's school food hard to swallow, say inspectors' appear to give that impression. Diet is an important determinant of health, but chips never seemed to do Alf Tupper - The Tough of the Track any harm.

Cadence would welcome more of a debate about the health of young people, particularly in relation to physical activity. The Guardian does not address the issue, but perhaps there is more to be read into their reporting of ‘One teenager told inspectors that he had become far fitter as a result of regular walks to a nearby chip shop'.

The thing about physical activity is that we know many young people already enjoy it, encouraging them to do more is therefore pressing at an open door. That‘s clearly not the case when replacing chips with salad.

So does this mean we need someone to do a Jamie for kid's sport? Or will the 2012 Olympics do it for us?

Cadence thinks not. We think part of the answer is putting more thought into creating neighbourhoods that make people naturally want to be active.

Let's have more public spaces and streetscapes that make us smile, make us want to walk to school or work, cycle, kick a ball or just say hello to a neighbour.

At the risk of over-simplifying, which would be the more prized social innovation for the nation?

• a doubling of children who were allowed to walk to school
• a doubling of children who eat Jamie's dinners

your comments

Jeremy Cushing
Posts: 5

Jamie's dinners
Reply #5 on : Sat October 13, 2007, 15:41:00

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Actually the Guardian did recently have a report (October 9th) that various sports bodies (like the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences) were revising their advice on exercise to make it clear that you need real exercise not ordinary activities like climbing stairs. With regard to strees and other public spaces the car lobby is so strong with politicians that you probably won't see much done unless pressure is organised from somewhere else. I would like to see parents (especially) organising themselves in local cells to put pressure on local politicians, and possibly even some direct action (put barriers up while kids play football in your street for an hour or two? combined with leaflets and posters and of course press releases). This sort of thing has got to be got away from politicians and owned by ordinary people.

Bill
Posts: 5

Jamie's School Dinners and Physical Activity
Reply #4 on : Thu October 04, 2007, 15:09:51

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Talk all you like about improving public space and in particular the means to travel through that space in a safe and enjoyable fashion. It is traffic engineers that have the final say on how these streets are designed in accordance with loopy, prescriptive health and safety guidelines that make it less attractive to cycle and walk, and allow primacy to the car (how it passed health and safety guidelines I'll never know). Traffic engineers are in turn accountable to politicians who follow an increasingly car owning electorate (nearly three quarters of households and rising). Unless society begins to accept greater constraints on our unfettered use of the car we might as well end the debate now. For starters we need to put in 15 mph speed limits in residential areas, share use with traffic calming and play areas on lightly trafficked streets (involving less parking?!), and installing average speed cameras to limit traffic speeds to 30mph on urban clearways. Unfortunately the reality is all too different. Last week in my local paper I read about a woman who had been crushed by a lorry leaving behind a partner and two adult children. The driver admitted he was rifling through papers in the cab when he crushed her. The judge gave him a £300 fine, five licence points and he's back driving again. Any adults like to start cycling? How about children? Some might call encouraging it in this environment reckless....

Karl
Posts: 5

Jamie's dinners
Reply #3 on : Wed October 03, 2007, 15:04:48

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But, which is more of an issue for kids, healthy diet and not enough exercise ? or rubbish diet and plenty of activity ?

Is the upping of activity more achievable for young people in the more deprived areas ?

Danny
Posts: 5

Re: Jamie Oliver's dinners - remember Alf Tupper?
Reply #2 on : Wed October 03, 2007, 13:53:06

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I blame the crisps in the pack lunch boxes. If the choice were healthy lunch or no lunch I suspect they'd eat. Posh kids get healthy food in their lunch box so prefer even the new healthy school dinners - hence no fall in consumption in posh areas. Ban crisps as well as knives at school?

Graham Jones
Posts: 5

Re: Jamie Oliver's dinners - remember Alf Tupper?
Reply #1 on : Wed October 03, 2007, 13:18:32

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or a doubling of gold medals?

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