Kids and chips

by frog

A story in Britain’s Observer over the weekend explains the direction in which that country is going with respect to school meals. The story reads:

Chips should not be served to pupils more than once a week and salt must be banished from their tables, according to a report that will set out stringent new guidelines for school meals this week.

New nutritional standards for children … will give parents and teachers an idea of the kinds of meals that should be eaten on an average day. They set out the calorie content as well as the nutritional requirements for children aged from five to 18, in a format likely to be adopted by the government as its standard for school meals across England and Wales.

The situation in New Zealand is a little different: very few students here have a cooked, sit-down lunch in a school canteen, but rather buy food from a tuck shop that they eat outside or in classrooms. However, the same sort of idea could easily be followed here: the Ministry of Health could set standards for the food that school tuck shops should sell, and have some kind of enforcement mechanism.