Cut out jam sarnies, parents told as schools give lunchbox lessons

PARENTS have been told to stop giving their children jam sandwiches, as schools introduce lessons for adults in how to pack a healthy lunch box.

A study that tracked 18 schools over a decade found just one in 60 of the meals was healthy, with children frequently missing out on fruit and vegetables, and instead getting biscuits and chocolate.

Charities said they were working with more than 100 schools to try to encourage healthier habits, including classes for parents in how to create a healthy packed lunch.

The research by the University of Leeds found that six in 10 children were eating white bread, rolls and wraps, with popular fillings including jam and Nutella chocolate spread. Just one in five lunch boxes contained a vegetable, while around half included fruit.

Mandatory rules on nutritional quality for school dinners were introduced in 2006 in England but no law covers packed lunches. The research found the average packed lunch being provided by parents had more calories than is allowed for school meals.

More than half had crisps or other savoury snacks, with a rise in the popularity of pepperoni sticks, while one in three contained a chocolate biscuit.

Around four in 10 contained sugary squash or a carton of fruit drink.

Stephanie Slater, founder and chief executive of charity School Food Matters, said: “Packed lunches rarely meet the school food standards … We’re supporting schools to put together a packed lunch policy and workshops for parents so that they know what to include.”

More than 100 schools are being enrolled in the programme over the next five years, with schools offered a “menu of support”, including the workshops for parents on “affordable nutritious” fare. Tam Fry, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, urged Boris Johnson to ban packed lunches in schools and instead ensure all children get a hot school meal every day.

Prof Jason Halford, president of the European Association for the Study of Obesity, speaking at the European Association for the Study of Obesity, in Maastricht, said: “Helping families to pack more healthy lunches is obviously something that should be support but we need to understand the barriers families face doing this, particularly with the rising prices of perishable foods. We also need to ensure that we don’t stigma families by shaming.”

Dieters at slimming classes should include overweight children, a study of Slimming World members found. In a survey of 396 Slimming World members, more than a third with children aged five to 11 were worried their child was overweight or obese.

Sir Keir Starmer never misses a chance to denounce the Government for its sins, real or perceived. On multiple occasions, he called for the Prime Minister to resign over the partygate saga. He demanded that Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, do the same after he was fined by the Metropolitan Police for breaching lockdown rules. Sir Keir’s moralising over the issue even reportedly caused disquiet among members of his shadow Cabinet. They worried that it was preventing Labour from talking about issues of more immediate concern to voters.

Now, Sir Keir has himself become embroiled in allegations of coronavirus rule-breaking. The Labour leader was filmed drinking beer with colleagues in the Durham office of Mary Foy MP last year. He has repeatedly dismissed the story, maintaining that it was a meal break during a work event and therefore not in breach of the rules.

First, however, Labour had to admit that Angela Rayner, the deputy leader, was also present at the event. Then it emerged that a large quantity of food had been ordered from a nearby takeaway and that as many as 30 people may have been there. Yesterday, Durham Constabulary announced that it had decided to investigate the gathering. The force had previously opted against an investigation, but it reviewed the decision “following the receipt of significant new information”.

This is a serious matter for the Labour leader. It is true that the police are only investigating one event, while the Met’s inquiry is into multiple alleged breaches at Downing Street. As leader of the opposition, he was also not directly responsible for writing the rules that he is accused of breaking.

Nevertheless, he gave ironclad support to the Government’s restrictions, and on occasion even insisted that ministers should go further. Moreover, it is irrelevant that he is unlikely to receive a fine, because of Durham’s policy not to impose them for coronavirus rule-breaking retrospectively. The Labour leader considered merely the fact that Boris Johnson was under investigation by the Metropolitan Police to be sufficient cause for him to be removed from office. “Honesty and decency matter,” he said.

Sir Keir has sought to make political capital out of the Prime Minister’s discomfort, evidently believing that he could contrast his own reputation for being sober and serious-minded with Mr Johnson’s more liberal approach to life. Now, he has boxed himself into a corner, one in which almost every one of his political attacks on his rivals can be turned against him. Surely, by his own logic, he has little choice but to resign.

Protocol problem

Of all the results announced yesterday, the most consequential could well turn out to be those for elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly. It would be wrong to assume that a relatively strong performance by the hard-line nationalists, Sinn Fein, represents rising support for a united Ireland. There is little evidence that public opinion in the province has swung behind a border poll, and Sinn Fein focused its campaign on cost-of-living issues rather than constitutional matters. The Unionist vote was more split than it has historically been, while many voters migrated towards the centrist Alliance party.

Nevertheless, Northern Irish politics is likely to become more unstable in the coming months, not less. The proximate cause is continuing anger about the Northern Ireland Protocol, agreed as part of the Brexit deal, which treats the province differently from the rest of the UK for trade purposes. Unionist parties consider it to be an outrageous imposition that undermines their place within the Union.

The Government has attempted to renegotiate the protocol with the EU, but with little luck. The Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, had hoped that a new deal could be reached earlier in the year, but that deadline passed with nothing to show for it. There had been talk of new legislation in Westminster that would allow ministers to override parts of the protocol unilaterally. It is unclear whether even that will now happen.

The status quo is clearly unsustainable. Unless something changes, it may be impossible for the parties at Stormont to form a power-sharing administration. What is the Government going to do about it?

Jammed nuisance

In Britain, sandwiches for a picnic or a packed lunch on an outing were never expected to be a pleasure. At afternoon tea cucumber sandwiches, as in The Importance of Being Earnest, might have their aficionados. But on a trip to the Geological Museum, sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper would have been stowed in the pocket of a gabardine raincoat. If the slices of bread could then be peeled apart they might retain traces of a thin application of fish paste or the optimistically named sandwich spread. Jam was the norm: strawberry by default, or raspberry if it had little hard woody bits in it. Now parents are being bossily put through “workshops” in making up school lunchboxes for their children. Jam sandwiches are forbidden. Really, it’s packed lunches that should be forbidden and a proper hot meal provided instead.