When I was...13 maybe? My mum offered me £100 to eat a salad. And I didn't take it. Maybe I was just more stubborn than the average teenager, but I really doubt it would work especially as they don't get anything straight away.

Junk food just shouldn't be allowed in schools and the healthy food replacing it needs to be appetising. And HE ought to be mandatory (for boys and girls) and teach real cooking skills as well as nutrition, not marketing which is all I really remember from HE.


(Edited by Yally 21/05/2005 13:20)

Well my fokes offered to pay my drivers license if I wouldn't smoke till my 18th birthday (18 is the legal age to drive a car in NL). And I have never ever smoked in my life (24 now) and got a free drivers license So I guess long term rewards do work on some people presuming the reward is big enough and the probability of getting it in the end is high enough.

100 quid for eating a salad and not doing it makes no economic sense to me..... not like you will have to eat another one after it or anything. Think of all the junk food you could have bought for 100 quid to get the nasty taste of the saled out of your mouth (btw I love salads, just allergic for tomato)

But is it really the duties of the schools to teach children healthy eating / cooking? Especially considering they can't even get children to spell / speak properly! (said the dyslexic )

But what are we supposed to do? We can't really get childservices to haunt parents with overweight children and if it is because of their eating pattern put the parents on a mandetory cooking course or something. Of course combined with healthy meals at school. Or can we?

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by Chambler
100 quid for eating a salad and not doing it makes no economic sense to me..... not like you will have to eat another one after it or anything. Think of all the junk food you could have bought for 100 quid to get the nasty taste of the saled out of your mouth (btw I love salads, just allergic for tomato)

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Yeah, I know, I was a weird kid. I do eat salads occasionally these days but no one will offer me money for it!

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But is it really the duties of the schools to teach children healthy eating / cooking? Especially considering they can't even get children to spell / speak properly! (said the dyslexic )

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Yes, basically, its the schools duty to provide an education and this includes nutrition. Ideally they'd get this education at home, but obviously many children don't so if the government wants to do something about it, schools are the first place to start. Since most schools teach HE anyway, I don't see how making the curriculum actually effective would be so difficult (teach how and what to cook and why from an early age and it will sink in). Plus, if we teach this generation how to eat healthily, they will hopefully pass it on to their children and so on as well as the education they receive in schools.

And again, make sure that the food provided in school is healthy too, so the kids are getting at least one healthy meal a day. I really don't see why this would be so hard.

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Yes, basically, its the schools duty to provide an education and this includes nutrition. ... Since most schools teach HE anyway, I don't see how making the curriculum actually effective would be so difficult (teach how and what to cook and why from an early age and it will sink in)

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Sure we need to teach children about nutrition but teaching people how to cook proper, as in actually let them do it? Getting kids in close contact to sharp knifes / boiling water / gas / fire etc without close supervision is in my eyes not a brilliant idea as that is bound to cause problems.

You just can't do this in a school enviroment with "youngish" children. As although most schools will have kitchens etc unauthorized / untrained personel isn't even allowed in there, for a good reason and they are busy most of the day anyways to sort food for the kids / staff.

So I don't think thats all that easy. It would be too complex and expensive (new kitchens / special equipment / extra (close) supervision (giving kids from certain areas knifes after they just had a fight on the school yard doesn't sound like a good idea to me to start with... no matter how much armed guards you put in that kitchen))

This part of the socialization of a child is a job for the parents. Maybe government sponsored cooking classes within existing facilities that already deal with cooking classes would be a solution though.

My viewpoint still is that if we cannot get children to spell / speak / do math etc properly we might need to focus on those things first. Get the basics first as if they can't read & do math properly they will never ever be able to work out any of the stuff in a cookbook or an additional cooking course

My girlfriends mum runs a kitchen at a school and they only do healthy stuff now (2 healthy warm meals (no microwave / only proper meat / vegs etc and almost never ever something deepfried), fresh sandwiches and a full saladbar). But some kids just use the money they get for their school dinners to go to KFC which is just around the corner.

(Edited by Chambler 21/05/2005 17:58)

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by Chambler
(quotes)
Getting kids in close contact to sharp knifes / boiling water / gas / fire etc without close supervision is in my eyes not a brilliant idea as that is bound to cause problems.

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Blugh. This is the sort of fears people have when we live with a ligitigation culture. Wow, here's a thought, some day these kids will have to interact in the real world..you know the one, it has real dangers and everything. I cooked at school, as did many of us - amazingly somehow we managed to cook with flames, boiling water and sharp knives! It's incredible that none of us were killed! How the school managed not to be sued for millions I'll never know.

Besides, somehow these kids manage on those dangerous pot noodles and microwave meals at home. The steam might burn them. Warning "Do not eat the packaging!"

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This part of the socialization of a child is a job for the parents.

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To some extent I agree with you here - putting everything on the school is just another way of making "them" accountable for everything. Because remember people, when you blow yourself up on a firework, its "there" fault for not telling not to eat lit fireworks...sue them at once!

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My viewpoint still is that if we cannot get children to spell / speak / do math etc properly we might need to focus on those things first.

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Yes, it would be a start, but its all a balanced package. They need a balanced set of skills, and that includes cooking. They dont have to be working with knives, boiling water etc at primary level, but by secondary school if it was good enough for us why not them?

The depressing thing here is that this is a result of the erosion of many things of many years. There is no quick fix now to start to sort out the problems created by a society obsessed with greed, consumerism, and rights for everyone with none of the associtated responsibilities.

Brilliant idea not feed kids junk food but instead bribe them to eat healthily And X Boxes will just encourage them to sit at home in front of the tv playing games. Defeat the object of fitness and health somewhat.