[Sca-cooks] OT - Somewhat amusing in light of recent healthy foodrants

[Celia des Archier]

> "They shouldn't be allowed to tell the kids what to eat," Mrs.  
> Critchlow said of the school authorities. "They're treating them  
> like criminals."

No, they're treating them like children!  One might surmise that if their
parents had given these children good choices from a young age, that they
would have developed healthier tastes... not to mention a little discipline
about eating what was presented to them. 

This may sound ogre-ish, but I was brought up to at least try what I was
given, and while my parents (sadly), did not have healthy eating habits and
I, therefore, did not grow up eating healthy foods, I did at least grow up
with an appreciation of a variety of foods, because I was "made" to try
things. And as an adult I find that I not only like many healthy foods, (I
even am much better at eating vegetables than my mother and father were), I
also have retained that attitude that you should not only try things, but
you should recognize that your tastes change over time and try things that
you didn't like before later down the road.

I've also done child care, and my experience is that if you offer children
only healthful food choices at a young age, they are as likely as not to
choose healthier foods as they grow up.  When I had children in my care,
they were always offered several choices, but they were only offered
healthful choices.  And, oddly enough, there never seemed to be any "picky"
kids at my house.  So the whole idea that kids will only eat hamburgers and
chips is, IMO, all on the parents.  None of the children that I know who
were raised *not* to eat hamburgers and chips will "only eat hamburgers and
chips".  Children aren't spoiled unless the parents spoil them. 

At the earliest age, parents make *all* the food choices for their children.
It is entirely up to the parents whether that child grows up a glutton for
fast food, or acclimated to fresh fruits & vegetables, "good carbs & good
fats" and wholesome proteins rather than just starch and other nutritionally
empty carbs (which all that bread-y pizza and mostly bread sandwiches we had
in the 70's were) and artery clogging fats. While it is true that children
tend towards uncomplicated palettes... one can cater to those uncomplicated
palettes with simple yet healthy options rather than falling back on the bad
habits taught in their youth... like the idea that ketchup is a 'vegetable'.
And it's not just me who says so... child health experts concur on this one
(for example: http://kidshealth.org/parent/food/general/toddler_meals.html) 

But, of course, if the parents had accepted their responsibility to teach
their children to eat healthfully in the first place, the schools wouldn't
have needed to be shamed into changing their menus by a media personality...
the children would have demanded it long ago, as some have begun to do here
in the states.  Of course, many of the kids were doing the same thing in the
UK according to this article from 2003
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=111688


And this UK primary school has been doing the right thing for years now:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3995387.stm