Bernard Matthews: A man whose debased food products have harmed the health of many thousands of people

The Guardian's obituary for Bernard Matthews: A man whose debased food products have harmed the health of many thousands of people. This obituary seems a fitting tribute.

I always think, in particular, of the school-children who were served his highly-salted, toxic, Turkey Twizzlers as their school dinners, thereby damaging their health at that time and also giving them the taste for salty meals that would continue to damage them throughout their adult years. Children need to be protected from salt and salty food.

The Education Authorities and the Health Authorities that permitted children's health to be damaged by perversions of food in order to save money and to prosper big business, share the responsibility for harming those innocent children, and for much of the nation's present ill-health by way of obesity, high blood pressure, heart problems, stroke, diabetes, cancer, arthritis et al.

Andrew Lansley has a cheek criticising Jamie's hard work in improving School Meals

See this Guardian article. When Jamie began his campaigning work to improve school meals, a frequent substance that appeared on the children's lunch plates was a highly-salted, processed parody of food called Turkey Twizzlers: devoid of real nutrition and harming children's health by its high salt content, a major cause of obesity in children, it could have been doing children nothing but harm. - Jamie worked indefatigably to put an end to this national scandal and deserves unstinted praise, not criticism, for his success in improving school dinner provision and drawing attention to lack of cookery teaching, etc. - Shame on Andrew Lansley!

A good news story about healthy hot meals in some rural schools: - set up by Tim Crabtree and Local Food Links

Recipe for success

Extract from Guardian article:

"As Dorset this week stages a celebration of local food - a reflection of the growing interest in local, organic produce that began with the rise of farmers' markets - the man who helped kick-start this trend has turned to something more significant than catering for the rural rich.

Tim Crabtree set up the West Dorset Food and Land Trust, which initiated the farmers' markets, but now runs Local Food Links, a community-benefit society that cooks and delivers hot meals to schools around Bridport.

Crabtree says the impetus behind Bridport's LFL was that while visitors and retired people could afford to shop at farmers' markets, ordinary working people struggled. "We live in a low-wage economy, and so our remit has been to address the fact that local and organic food has become an expensive niche market."

Almost two years ago, in response to the Jamie's School Dinners series on TV, the government announced that all schools should serve hot meals by September 2008. But amid all the fuss about "scrotum burgers" and Turkey Twizzlers, one fact was overlooked: 25 years ago, under the last Conservative government, all the primary schools in Dorset got rid of their kitchens.

The county council thought microwavable ready meals would be the only option if schools were to reinstate hot lunches, but companies refused to tender for the job, saying they were unable to do it profitably due to the large number of small schools spread across such a rural area.

LFL stepped in, initially offering hot, freshly made soup to two primary schools. Ruth Clench, headmistress of Bridport county primary school, says: "There was a really good take-up, and a superb part of the experiment was that some of the children helped make it. That persuaded other children to try it." Laura Wood, whose daughters attend the school, says: "Before, my kids had only ever eaten Heinz tomato soup, and it encouraged me to make soup at home, too."

Encouraged by the success of the soup kitchen, Crabtree expanded the operation in April to provide hot meals two days a week to eight schools. He hopes that by Easter next year all eight schools will be supplied with hot meals five days a week. The target is 95,000 meals, which would take the area to the current national average of a 40% take-up.

What has helped in getting children to accept a wide range of vegetables is that they get involved in choosing them. LFL holds tasting sessions for the children and their parents, pays close attention to their comments, and also sneaks extra vegetables into their meals - for instance, by pureeing butternut squash and adding it to tomato sauce (a Jamie Oliver recipe)."

Lose weight and improve your health in many ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

I watched ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald this evening - entitled Food for the Brain

The ITV website says: "Children and teachers at a previously under-performing school discover if a radical, year-long experiment overhauling their diet and fitness has yielded improvements in the classroom."

What a pleasure it was to see how improved nutrition benefited the these primary schoolchildren! - The concerted efforts of headmistress, teachers, mothers and the children themselves really did pay off...(o: - Children ate healthier school meals or took healthier packed lunches (in particular, containing fresh fruit) to school. Also their mothers made great efforts to provide them with healthier meals at home. - In particular they cooked, rather than just giving their children ready meals. - Also they sat with their children at the table to eat, instead of the children eating convenience food while sitting watching the TV.

The changes were dramatic and most impressive: - happier children, better behaved children, who were better able to give attention and to concentrate, better able to cooperate and play with their siblings, reading better, scoring higher in school tests, especially maths. - And the mothers were so happy at the improvements and so justifiedly proud of themselves for the results of the work they had put in.

Personally, I don't believe in ADHD and such medical labels for a putative disease that some of the children were supposed to suffer from, and for which no doubt some drug-happy doctors would want to prescribe ritalin. - It simply stands to reason that if you do not feed a body proper food, then both the body and the mind will perform sub-optimally.

The best 'doctor' is good food/good nutrition...(o:


Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods
and Associated health conditions

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free...

Pea risotto? Where are my fish fingers and ice cream? - Guardian

Extract:

"Beans, chips and lumpy mash have had their day. Butternut squash and pea risotto, lentil burgers and grated beetroot are now part of the school dinner scene. And five-year-old Gabriel does not approve. "I hate it. On my normal dinner I have fish fingers and ice cream for pudding, but this," he samples the risotto topped with parmesan and pulls a sour expression, "tastes like cheese."

Primary school dinners are turning into gastro-pub lunches, and the young jury is still out. While Islington may be the spiritual home of fancy pub food, its children appear to be sceptical. Thornhill primary school in the north London borough has begun implementing a full gastro pub-style dinner based on dishes offered at the acclaimed Duke of Cambridge organic pub nearby. It's a big change from the pre-Jamie Oliver days of the much maligned Turkey Twizzler.

Since 2004, Thornhill has tried to improve meals within the menu provided by Scholarest, the school catering firm, but in the end it felt constrained by the ingredients. So, with a group named School Meals Matter Islington, a collaboration of parents, governors, teachers and representatives from the pub, the school decided that when the contract with Scholarest expired in September it would take control of its lunches. The Duke of Cambridge put on extra staff to train Thornhill's school dinner lady, Caroline Moore, helped create a version of its menu to suit pupils, and provided links to food suppliers.

The dishes will be put together at a cost of £2 a meal, rather than the average price of about £14 for a main course at the Duke of Cambridge. While this is 50p higher than the average price of British school meals, and 30p higher than the average in Islington, the head teacher, Matt Chappel, said the school hoped that a 70% take-up rate would allow it to lower the price in time."

I'm delighted to see (further down the article) that the firm intention is to make the children's meals lower in salt than adult meals are. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/children.html

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

British School Dinners and Jamie Oliver

Three Cheers for Jamie Oliver! - for drawing attention to the scandalously poor quality of so many school dinners in Britain - containing loads of salt (main cause of obesity in children) and low-grade fat, lots of sugar (damages teeth) and very lacking in fresh fruit and vegetables. He shamed the politicians and others into taking action to improve the meals and to spend more time and money on them. The changes he brought about will have immeasurably improved the health, behaviour and school performance of all the children who are now eating real food at dinnertime, instead of junk like 'turkey twizzlers'...

Three boos for all the dinosaurs who are still churning out the advice that obese people should simply eat less and exercise more! - After decades of this advice, the incidence of obesity is still rising, even though most obese folk are restricting their food intake most of the time. - You'd think the 'experts' would realise by now that the advice simply does not work...

Think about it: - it's only fat people who get told that they are over-eating and should eat less. - Do the slim people who eat massive amounts, often of high calorie food, ever get told they are eating too much and should eat less? - No they don't!

Obesity is not caused by over-eating and cannot be 'cured' by under-eating.

Obesity is not caused by eating too much. - It is caused/initiated by fluid retention. - Dieting is potentially harmful.
Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)