Judging parents isn’t going to make children more healthy

JAMIE OLIVER winds me up no end and this week his Food Foundation issued a report which confirmed my long-held belief that his sanctimonious smugness is repellant.

The report slammed school cake and bake sales for sending the wrong message about what foods children should eat, even though they are a vital means of fundraising.

It also criticised schools for using things like doughnuts to reward classes for good attendance.

Produced in partnership with Sheffield University, it said: “The culture of high fat and sugary foods used as rewards, in fundraising and in celebrations, is creating social and physical environments that contradict children’s food education.”

In plain English what they’re saying is that children are getting confused about what is healthy and what is not. I beg to differ. School bake sales do not happen every day and neither are sweet treats handed out on a regular basis because they are just that – a treat – and children from nursery age upwards know exactly what they are.

No four, five or six-year-old that I know mistakes a Freddo Frog bar for a sensible meal or thinks sponge cakes are one of the main food groups. So, if they can work it out, why can’t a multimillionaire chef and his fancy foundation do it?

Perhaps the opportunity to be preachy and elitist was too good to miss. It’s not his first offence either. Back in 2013 when he was promoting his series Jamie’s Money Saving Meals, he criticised families for splashing out on big TVs and eating “expensive” fast food.

He said – and this is not a joke – that he wanted to “teleport” poorer families to the streets of Sicily to see how a street cleaner who “has 25 mussels, 10 cherry tomatoes, and a packet of spaghetti for 60 pence, knocks out the most amazing pasta”.

It’s wildly patronising talk and oversimplifies the situation faced by many families, while further stigmatising those on lower incomes.

He also said families could save money by “dropping by the market” and picking up loose veg.

Yes Jamie, it sounds easy and anyone with half a brain knows that often the local fruit and veg stall offers better and cheaper produce than supermarkets.

But here’s the thing. As the cost of living rises and wages fail to keep pace, many parents have to work long hours to make ends meet. Some even have two jobs.

They’re knackered and time-poor, not to mention financially constrained.

So shopping is usually done in a rush in one supermarket with overtired children in tow.

Tight budgets cannot be wasted, so experimenting with things like mussels or other aspirational foods is folly because the kids will turn their noses up and they’ll go to waste.

In the whirlwind of daily life, all you want for your child to eat the non-awardwinning but fundamentally nutritious meal that you have prepared and put in front of them. And, at the end of a long week, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a chippy tea. In fairness, it’s not just Jamie on the parent-shaming bandwagon. is

A couple of years ago, when I was with a group of mums whose children attend a different school to my son’s, I overheard something so outrageous I had to ask them to repeat it.

They said teachers at this particular school were inspecting children’s lunch boxes to see if the food they had been given was healthy enough, and would sniff flasks to check there was nothing more sinister than water inside.

I thought it must have been some aberration. I was wrong.

A quick Google search shows how such intrusions have been ruffling parents’ feathers up and down the UK.

But is this something teachers should be spending their time on?

Their unions are always telling us how their workload is rising and putting them under pressure, so surely the flask sniffing is something that could be dispensed with.

As long as parents aren’t sending their children to school with a Red Bull and a pack of Tic Tacs as their lunch (teachers did report this happening at one school), what’s inside the lunch box should be no-one else’s business.

In a country where huge numbers of people rely on foodbanks just to have enough food to survive, surely singling out the school bake sale as public health enemy number one is a ridiculous waste of time and resources.

Instead of putting a huge amount of effort into such a ridiculous sideshow, why don’t they research the widening gap between pay and the weekly food bill because, like it or not, I know from personal experience that prices are rising?

Why don’t they find out the truth behind why some people are facing such hard times that “heating or eating” will be a real choice this winter?

Heaping judgement on overworked parents and families in difficulty provides no long-term solution to anything.