Shock tactics do work

Nursery World, 21 April 2005, 12:00AM

Letter of the week wins £30 worth of children's books I was shocked and offended by Julian Grenier's 'Food for thought' article (Insight, 7 April). Jamie Oliver's campaign is flawed, you say?

Letter of the week wins £30 worth of children's books

I was shocked and offended by Julian Grenier's 'Food for thought' article (Insight, 7 April). Jamie Oliver's campaign is flawed, you say?

I am a parent and an early years supply teacher. All the schools I work in serve the same sort of food in the same way. The basis of the meal is always cardboard-textured pizza or some variety of reformed meat. It is served on plastic trays together with a sugary sweet. Vegetables are boiled until bereft of nutrients or put in sweetened tomato sauce. Staff requesting a meal get specially prepared jacket potatoes or salad - they are not expected to eat the same slop as the children.

Children's concentration and listening skills are decreasing year on year.

All possible causes must be considered, but clearly diet is a contributory factor. Parents know the effect that highly coloured and sweetened foods have on young children's behaviour.

Your pull-out on 'Childhood through the ages' (in the same issue) asserts that childhood is an historical construct, a 'set of ideas about what children are like, what they ought to be like and how adults should treat them'. It seems that over the past 20 years an ideology has evolved which accepts that children eat unhealthier, blander, sweeter food than adults.

Chant with me the 'children's menu' from any restaurant: chicken nuggets, pizza, fish fingers, chips, ice cream...

It is on our nation's conscience that children now eat badly, but until Oliver's campaign no-one had any clear idea what we could do about it.

Grenier says, 'Progress can only happen when there is systematic public policy, supported by detailed research and carefully planned action.'

Sadly, I disagree. The Government has been in possession of nutritionists'

research findings for years, but Oliver's campaign has had an immediate impact where cold facts have failed. Perhaps it takes shock tactics to wake everyone from their saturated fat-induced stupor.

* Miriam Fraser, Hatfield, Hertfordshire

This article was first published on Nursery World