EHJ April 2005, pages 7

Oliver's Twist

Issues relating to healthy diets and food need a glamorous, high-profile champion and I am reminded of an incident which occurred about seven years ago. At the time I was involved in research into the lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables for low-income families. A fellow EHP noted that it was an interesting subject, but one that had been "done" years earlier. So I am glad that Jamie Oliver's rebranding and repackaging of the old issue has proved successful with the media, public and health professionals.

The cost of ingredients for a school meal is 37 pence. Jamie Oliver's "discovery" that schools spend such a desultory amount, feeding children, predominantly, processed food has made banner headlines.

The Channel 4 programme: Jamie's school dinners has produced a wave of media publicity. Suddenly, every serious journalist and newsworthy programme has embraced the mantra that school dinners are to blame for the increase in obesity levels and growing crisis in the diet-related health of children.

I have never met or even seen a photograph of child nutritionist Prof Michael Crawford but it is evident that he does not have the allure of Jamie Oliver. I say this because Prof Crawford's concurrent message at the launch of last month's Lunchbox report (a survey by the Community Nutrition Group and Food Standards Agency of 688 home-packed lunchboxes) barely received any media coverage.

Prof Crawford called for a total ban on chips at school and his assertion that instead children should be offered Omega 3 rich meals, did not generate the interest that the Naked Chef's rant against turkey twizzlers has. Yet Prof Crawford's claim that children born between 1990-2000 are more at risk of developing behavioural or mental problems than those born in the 1960s due to lack of brain food should worry us all.

It should certainly be of concern to the parents who packed the 688 lunchboxes studied. Overall, researchers found that parents' inclusion of fruit and vegetables in lunchboxes continued to be low. Sugary, fatty foods in the form of soft drinks, cakes, biscuits, chocolate bars and crisps dominated lunchboxes.

There is no doubt that the cost of the sampled lunchboxes will have been in excess of the infamous 37 pence, but the results are the same or arguably even more catastrophic, for it is the hand that pushes the shopping trolley that rules the world.

Parents and health professionals such as you or I need to realise that we do not all need to be Jamie Oliver to make things happen. In the wake of the Sudan 1 debacle, which has resulted in the recall of 474 food products, there is a collective responsibility for us to make the food industry and government realise that we are no longer prepared to accept poor quality, processed, chemical and additive-laden food or feed it to our children.

The cognoscenti among you will recognise that the food industry will not willingly stop targeting children with the promotion of junk food, so it is simply time that we stopped buying their spin as well as their products. Parents have the power and indeed the responsibility to keep their children away from such poor quality food.