School Dinners

A couple of things recently have had me thinking about school dinners, so I thought I’d share those thoughts here.

“London Primary schools ban pork”

It came out in some newspapers on Friday that Islington Council has stopped schools from supplying pig meat in it’s primary school meals (not secondary schools though)

The headlines dramatized it as ‘Schools ban pork to not offend Muslims’ or similar. As you might expect, I sighed, shook my head and looked more closely in to it.

The council state on their website:

An Islington Council spokesman said, “It’s not true that pork is banned in our primary schools.”

“It is not currently provided in our catering contract, but if any primary school wants to serve pork we will work with them to arrange it.”

In interviews printed in several papers, council spokesmen have clarified their position by saying the following:

“‘Young children, some as young as four, of different religious and ethnic backgrounds may not know which foods contain pork, or may not realise the importance of avoiding it due to their culture or beliefs.”

“Monitoring each child, every day ensuring they are avoiding pork, is an unnecessary cost at a time of tight budgets.”

I fail to see how any supervision is needed by the school to cover this. If a child is being brought up in a religion that restricts foods then it is up to the parents to teach their child what they can and cannot have – in the same way that a child with allergies must be taught when they can and cannot have. At a primary school age, allergy afflicted children are already aware of what they can’t have, and you know what, I’ll come to allergies in a minute.

So what we have is a council making a very worrying precedent that allows them to censor the choice of the majority of children to comfort the minority. Certainly they say they have not banned pork products, but I cannot see any school wasting time or effort in this time of austerity to negotiate getting in pork from any other providers.

There is, in my opinion, no real reason for the council to have done this.

“This school is a nut free zone”

The first thing that struck me when I saw this at my daughter’s school is that they use a peanut for the picture. The peanut (or ground nut) is a legume botanically speaking.

The sign next to it at least did say nut and peanut free, which is better, however I do wonder if the nut ban extends to pistachio and cashews on account of that family being seeds, and closer to prunes than true nuts in terms of family (much like the peanut is closer to peas).

Cashews, pistachios, peanuts, and other similar items are not botanical or ‘true’ nuts but more, culinary nuts, so grouped because they have a hard shell.

Now, in the first segment I argued that schools shouldn’t censor the food choices of it’s pupils, I will now do so again.

Perth and Kinros council have a document about this very subject, where they advise against nut bans, in fact I’ll copy / paste from their document here:

It is understandable why some schools choose to enforce ‘nut bans’, where it is forbidden for pupils to bring nuts, peanuts and food containing nuts and peanuts to school. However, there are several pitfalls in this approach:

1. It is impossible to provide an absolute guarantee that a school is truly nut-free. The danger of banning nuts may led to a false sense of security.

2. If you ban peanuts, what happens when other parents say they want similar policies implemented in relation to milk, egg, sesame, fish, fresh fruit and latex?.

3. Parents who demand nut-free zones may risk possible confrontation with other parents. In such an atmosphere, the risks may actually increase.

4. There is a strong case for arguing that food-allergic children will gain a better awareness of their allergies, and learn avoidance strategies, if they move in an environment where allergens may turn up unexpectedly. If they are trained to be vigilant, their growing awareness may pay dividends one day when, for example, a friend offers them a biscuit at a party.If they are used to a nut-free environment, they may take the biscuit without thinking.

Based on the above we recommend schools do not ban nuts and products containing nuts.

They sum up there my feelings on the whole thing.

Once you ban one type of food for a reason you open the door to a world of similar reasons; so to Islington Council I ask this: When you be banning Beef for the Hindus, Shellfish for the Jews, Onions Garlic, and root veggies for the Jainists … ?

To my Daughter’s school I ask this, when will you ban other allergen foods; dairy, onion, shellfish … again, a long list.

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