| Schoolchildren to don culinary roles to stay healthy |
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Healthy eating as well as cooking lessons are what students will have as additions in their new curriculum. Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary specified means through which healthy habits would be incorporated in children, by having cookery classes in school along with “healthy” school meals.
Kelly detailed out a proposition according to which school meals would be transformed to comply with nutritional needs of children, and both boys and girls between ages 11 to 14 would be taught methods of cooking vegetables and other basic meals. The suggestion of bringing back domestic science into the national curriculum was given by the School Meals Advisory Panel of the Government that acknowledged that institutions were only schooling children about various food theories, instead of teaching them certain primary culinary skills.
Endorsing the recommendation, Kelly said that children ought to have certain practical cooking abilities in order to inculcate healthy eating habits. He added that parents of those children whose schools did not have kitchens could also be informed about the kind of food that was permissible for tiffins. In addition, students would be restricted from going out of the school premises during lunchtime to avoid eating junk food.
This detailed proposition, which is yet to be consulted, follows Kelly’s declaration last week at the conference of the Labour Party that stated that junk food would not be allowed in canteens and vending machines of schools hereafter.
Besides, the School Meals Advisory Panel also found a whopping gap of £266 in funds for improvement of school dinners as the government had only granted £220 million earlier after the Jamie Oliver campaign and the new stringent school canteen rules proposed by the panel would involve about £486 million for execution.
Under the new food standards, students would be required to eat minimum one portion each of fruit and vegetables in a day for lunch and have easy accessibility to fresh water for drinking at all times. Also, the menu would offer children oily fish once in three weeks at least, and would not include more than two deep-fried items in a week. Besides, table salt and re-cooked food from “meat slurry” would be completely prohibited from the agenda along with confectionery or very spicy/salty snacks during lunch.
Juices to be offered besides water were skimmed or semi-skimmed milk, fresh fruit juices, yogurt and other milk drinks with minimal sugar of less than even 10%.
Posted
on : Tue, 04 Oct 2005 11:00 GMT | General News
By : Mike Lawson
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