Alongside the (rather positive) notion that children in schools (up to 14) should have an entitlement to classes wherein they are helped to learn to cook "healthy and wholesome" (but only "savoury") meals, there is, I am told, the completely mad-cap idea that school dinners should be compulsory; that is, that packed lunches should be banned, seemingly on the grounds that they are of variable quality. Will that apply to maths lessons as well, I wonder, on the same logic? Or, more pertinently, to breakfasts and evening meals – on exactly the same grounds.
And who will pay the cost of this compulsion? And who, a distasteful if somewhat topical issue this, will ensure that what little beef they'll be, isn't actually donkey?
I remember a Yorkshire farmer who told me, whilst I was in a school collecting data on children's growing, cooking and eating food, that there was no possibility of her son's being allowed to eat school meals because he ate 100% organic food at home, and the school's meals, reasonable though they were, did not reach this standard.
This was as much about parental responsibility as about food. Is that to be banned as well?
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