5 April, 2005

Feed me better

I'm going to recap last week's news I missed. Because I had the busiest week ever since this year began, I couldn't possibly catch up with anything like news. Here is a selection of recent news. I begin with this.

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» BBC News | TV chef welcomes £280m meals plan

Recent event of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Following his campaign, Feed Me Better, the UK government is to allocate an extra £280m over three years to improve school lunches.

His achievement should be praised, but should it have been done by him? The lack of nutritionally balanced school meals is responsible for school kitchens, which prioritise school budgets, and the government, which forces the schools to do so with small budgets. And to take care of nutritional balance of kids is parents' job.

In BBC's article, Liberal Democrat spokesman Phil Willis said;

The extra funds are welcome, but it's sad that it's taken a celebrity chef to get the government to act when they've had eight years to improve the sorry state of school dinners.

Willis also added;

It is breathtakingly cynical for Tony Blair suddenly to claim that he is passionate about the quality of school meals just because a celebrity chef has made a TV programme about it.

» BBC News | Have Your Say | How can school meals be made healthier?
I agree with him.

It's a bit disingenuous to complain that the government's announcement of more funds was prompted by Jamie's programme, or that it is just a cynical election ploy. From what I've read, considerable research and planning must have gone into the detail that was announced.
Tim Douglas, London, UK