Primary School Girl Told To Stop Photographing and Blogging School Meals 472
JamieKitson writes "British primary school (elementary to those of you in the U.S.) pupil Martha/'Veg' has been taking photographs of her school dinners and writing about them at her blog Never Seconds since April. The blog has become popular, and Martha decided to do something with the popularity: namely, raising money for an international school dinners charity. Unfortunately, the local council, Argyll and Bute, having apparently not heard of the Streisand effect, didn't like the publicity that her blog was generating and have shut her down. They said the blog made the catering staff fear for their jobs. There is a happy ending though: donations have gone through the roof and she has already passed her target."
U turn (Score:5, Informative)
Re:U turn (Score:5, Insightful)
That's good news. I wondered why they told this girl to stop in the first place because the food she photographed actually looks both healthy and tasty, so what was the problem?
Re:U turn (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:U turn (Score:5, Funny)
Re:U turn (Score:5, Funny)
You got raisins? When I was in school, "nature's candy" meant moose droppings. They'd just give us a dull knife and tell us to go out and kill something for lunch. And if you weren't fast enough to catch a squirrel or a vole, you starved to death. Once there was this kid who twisted his leg trying to catch a rabbit and we ended up tearing him to bits and eating him.
I'm telling you, we had it tough back in those days.
Re:U turn (Score:5, Funny)
you must be from Winnipeg.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/06/07/Teachers-let-kids-eat-moose-droppings/UPI-41501339102360/ [upi.com]
One 13-year-old boy ate one and then rushed to a river to rinse his mouth, while the second, a girl with braces, threw up, the report said.
Re:Oblig... (Score:4, Funny)
Lunch Lady Doris: Possibly the meat loaf.
The food improved as a result of her blog (Score:4, Informative)
The papers reported that in response to her blogging, the schools started allowing the kids to have as much salad and vegetables as they wanted (like kids are really into overcooked vegetables), so the food was improving a bit. But they really really didn't like to do that.
Yorkshire school dinners (Score:5, Funny)
Re:U turn (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:U turn (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations on growing up middle class. Many kids, especially inner city kids, don't have responsible parents to pack their lunch for them, let alone the money to buy twinkies or fruit-roll-ups. Many schools in the US also serve breakfast, and many kids qualify to receive both for free.
Re:U turn (Score:5, Informative)
Re:U turn (Score:5, Interesting)
In NYC they shift the school subsidized lunch programs to the city pools in the summer. It's the closest thing to a healthy meal those kids will get.
Re:U turn (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the richest and the most powerful country in the world after all.
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With the Food Desert [wikipedia.org] problem in places like Detroit, a food drop might not be that far fetched.
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Really makes a case against libertarianism, though.
No, it really doesn't.
Under libertarianism the program wouldn't exist therefore the children would starve.
Re:U turn (Score:4, Informative)
Congratulations on growing up middle class. Many kids, especially inner city kids, don't have responsible parents to pack their lunch for them, let alone the money to buy twinkies or fruit-roll-ups. Many schools in the US also serve breakfast, and many kids qualify to receive both for free.
Exactly. I spent most of my childhood in Canada (capital of BC) where there weren't any hot or prepared lunches supplied by the school. Then we moved to the US (Montana) where they had a hot lunch program. Lunches were subsidized or free for some people (depending on income level). Unfortunately they got different colored punch cards, so it was doubly easy to pick out the "poor kids" (i.e. lower income families). I ended up eating the prepared lunches as it was easier, helped me fit in as a "foreigner" (almost everyone ate the lunches) and even at full price it was quite affordable (possibly cheaper than making your own lunches).
The program was definitely needed where I lived in Montana otherwise there are plenty of kids that would have gone hungry. I was only a kid, but I don't think it would have been needed in the neighbourhood I grew up in Canada. I don't remember anyone not having a lunch (and as kids anything that makes someone stand out is noticed quickly). It appears now schools that have a lunch program are either private schools or in poorer areas (so it's either a feature of the elite or a support system). Apparently the middle class must fend for themselves.
Re:U turn (Score:5, Interesting)
Same. Although, I soon found out how to make a very very small amount of money stretch really far.
I used to catch the bus. Instead of buying bus tickets I would ride my bike to school and spend 30c? something like that at a fish&chips shop on the way which would usually get me one big or two or three small potato cakes. I realise now that the shop guy was being very nice.
This went on for some time. I never did find out if my mother knew I was riding my bike to school.. in any case, for three years (most of the time) I collected the bus money, caught the bus sometimes, always had a spare book of tickets, and rode or walked whenever I could.
I applaud the girl in TFA. always good to shine a light on the parts of our society the rest of us don't see. Am sure Jamie Oliver is loving this.
Re:U turn (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to tell you this but there is no such thing as "free". When I was young you were supposed to support your family and that meant feeding them. I fed my kids and I resent having to feed other people kids. There used to be a thing in society called responsibility. That meant you were responsible for you and your's. That free healthcare and free meals you allude to are paid for by taking money away from me and mine.
That's a pretty sickening attitude. Really, society only survives because thankfully not everyone thinks the way you do.
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Did you hear that they confiscated a child's turkey sandwich in the U.S. because the state inspector deemed it unhealthy? Then they gave her chicken nuggets. Freedom is dead.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/15/school-lunch-guidelines-p_n_1278803.html [huffingtonpost.com]
Re:U turn (Score:5, Informative)
The Turkey Sandwich story is a bunch of hysterical bunk that was rapidly picked up by Fox News and Huffington Post. It was a bunch of poorly worded reporting by the original source, Carolina Journal.
Please read: http://www.carolinajournal.com/jhdailyjournal/display_jhdailyjournal.html?id=8780 [carolinajournal.com] for the real deal.
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There is even more to the story, as the mother "opted-in" for the food inspection program but forgot she did so. It was a non-story story. I forgot about this additional blog post:
Enjoy: http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/02/15/a-north-carolina-non-troversy/ [ordinary-gentlemen.com]
Re:U turn (Score:5, Informative)
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I've heard of this happening where there is a child with a very serious peanut allergy.
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http://foodallergies.about.com/od/adultfoodallergies/f/nutsatschool.htm [about.com]
It seems odd to me that you haven't heard of this problem since it's been so widely publicized, but maybe that's only the case around here.
Re:U turn (Score:4, Funny)
Err...peanuts confisticated? Seriously? Are peanuts now a dangerous weapon?
I suppose the nuts themselves might be thrown and could put someones eye out....but would they allow a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
I'm guessing you're being as tongue and cheek as I am....?
Peanut butter could be thrown, and the spoon would put someone's eye out.
One should rely on tongue and cheek sandwiches.
Re:U turn (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always thought it was odd that kids got cafeteria meals in grade school.
It obviously depends a lot on where you live and go to school. I grew up in one of the poorer areas of Philadelphia and the vast majority of the kids I went to school with were latchkey kids in single-parent households (many of whom had younger siblings to care for when they got home, myself included, even in grade school), and I'm betting many of them ate even worse at home, as horrifying as that thought is to me.
I was in the reduced lunch program so my cafeteria meal only cost my mother $0.40 a day each for me and my younger brother, which even brown-bagging it couldn't really compete with cost-wise...
Later, when I was in high school (by that point my mother had married my stepfather who was in the U.S. Army and we were stationed in GA) the lunches were much higher quality than the Philly ones (but my God in heaven did they love their fucking chicken-fried steak, that was served at least once a week, if not more), but the rules on what you could bring were much, much more restrictive. So help you if they caught you drinking a can of soda, even the juices that come in cans like soda would be confiscated. They'd take candy from you if they caught you eating it, which was doubly ridiculous when you consider the fact that they sold candy at the fucking school store. You had to take it directly to your locker after purchase and leave it there or else they would take it. This is high school students we're talking about here, mind you, 18-year-old's getting hassled over Now-and-Laters, it was unreal.
Re:U turn (Score:4, Informative)
Oh yeah... I attended a GA high school (obedience school) and was really impressed with what they emphasized. The most important geometry to know was skirt length to knee distance, etc...
Re:U turn (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the way that some high schools treat their students [like little children] it's no wonder that so many young people today have such a hard time taking care of themselves after they graduate.
If you want to see something truly disturbing, check out the documentary The War on Kids [wikipedia.org]. It is currently available on Netflix; I just watched it a few days ago and was totally disgusted. The section on the over-medication of our children is especially troubling, and the coverage of the full SWAT raid at a South Carolina High School at the behest of the administration [cbsnews.com] (which turned up absolutely no drugs at all) is both infuriating and chilling at the same time.
Much of the documentary focuses on the testimony of kids dealing with the rise in police involvement in our schools, not to mention the ineffectiveness (and outright insanity) of zero-tolerance policies. The kid's themselves know it's a complete joke, all the anti-drug programs like D.A.R.E., plus the teachers talking about kids looking like fucking lobotomy patients after a change in meds, literally drooling...
I can tell you emphatically, there is no way in hell I'm going to allow my child to go to a school that even kids themselves cannot differentiate from a prison (they actually do an experiment with children in the documentary examining just that). I will be home-schooling my children, no matter what it takes. My kids will not be drones. They may not be able to diagram a sentence, but they'll damn sure know their rights.
Re:U turn (Score:4, Insightful)
Our campus was totally closed, although the degree with which it was closed changed a lot over my 4 years there. When I first started going there, there were portables [wikipedia.org] that were adjacent to the student parking lots, and the teachers stationed in those portables would watch out the windows for students trying to leave school grounds...but generally you could slip out if you were super-sneaky about it, although it sometimes required Mission: Impossible style coordination with students in those particular portables at a given period to act as a distraction to the teachers inside, who could just look up out the window and see the bulk of the lot from their desk.
Towards the end of my high-school career, though, they'd finally had it with kids like us getting off campus and started posting security guards out there, and a year or so after I left (when Columbine happened) they graduated up to a toll-booth style checkpoint with a permanent security guard and checked the badges of everyone entering and leaving campus. Our school was surrounded by woods on 3 sides so a lot of kids used to just park off-campus and sneak through the woods instead, but I've heard from a few people I went to school with that stayed in the area after graduation they've completely fenced in the grounds and removed a lot of the brush since I was last there almost 20 years ago to make this more difficult.
It's really shocking how much different the vibe is at school these days. I wouldn't want to be a student in today's public schools, that's for sure...I'd probably have been arrested a dozen times already for the shit we used to pull when we were in school, and it's not like I'm talking about the distant past or anything, I'm talking mid-90's here.
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When I went, it was somewhat like college...except they took attendance in the classes. You could leave campus...hell, on some assembly days, we ran and got some beer, and had a party near the river, etc. But we all graduated, did decent grades...and now have fine and successful careers.
I do think...senior year...they did start giving out student IDs....but it wasn't like you had to carry or show them for anything.
Re:U turn (Score:5, Insightful)
School lunches are a surprisingly powerful tool against malnourished kids in deprived areas. Getting a decent meal into deprived children is both good for their general health and for their ability to absorb the education the school is offering. Therefore it is a policy aim that all schools be able to offer a quality meal to any deprived children in the area (since deprivation occurs in wealthy areas as well as poor). In fact, the percentage of children entitled to such meals for free is used as a metric of the school's intake, those with a higher level of free lunches being assumed to have a less well supported intake. Given that such a meal must be offered to those entitled to it free, it makes economic sense to offer it to all children. It doesn't stop children bringing their own lunches to school as you describe, and many do. In my experience in comfortably off areas, about half of all children bring their own lunches and half have school lunches.
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To be fair I never got them at school, but please don't tell Jamie Oliver or he'll shit bricks and give the whole nation a lecture again on how it's disgusting that we dare to let children have a choice of what to eat or allow parents to consider letting them eat anything other than Jamie's menu.
All whilst he continues to become even more of a fatso himself, proving the point that it's actually got fuck all to do with whether you eat chips (fries for non-British) now and again or not, because Jamie gets Jam
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Here in China they just give us two sticks and a bowl. Now, how am I supposed to eat my soup with these two sticks?
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how am I supposed to eat my soup with these two sticks?
Is one of the sticks hollow?
~Loyal
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Re:U turn (Score:4, Funny)
Re:U turn (Score:5, Funny)
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Sorry, you think this [bbcimg.co.uk] looks healthy and tasty? Uh huh...
It appears to represent a reasonable (for a primary school child) amount of all four food groups, and even has a tasty low calorie Popsicle desert to finish it off. It may not be catered by outback steakhouse but looks like a good lunch to me.
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Sorry, you think this [bbcimg.co.uk] looks healthy and tasty? Uh huh...
Firstly, that sorry-looking excuse for a cheeseburger is an insult to human dignity. Poor kid's gonna need that stiff upper lip to bite into that son of a bitch as-is. If the time, effort, and expense is going to be put forth to make cheeseburgers, you put some ketchup, lettuce and onion on there at a bare minimum in order to normalize the flavor and provide a texture conducive to it being eaten, especially when the burgers are deployed on those nasty little miscible, hygroscopic buns, as opposed to proper
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That was the best description of hamburger handling devices I've ever seen.
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It does, to Scots.
I never had a school meal when I was in primary school, but a few of my friends did. And being at one of the better Glasgow Schools, even back then (early 90s), it was pretty much the same, just without the veg. Also Semolina. They loved to serve Semolina for some disgusting reason.
Re:U turn (Score:5, Funny)
What a coincidence! American schools love to serve salmonella.
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BRAWNDO! IT has the Electrolytes you Crave!
My daughters school had a choice of energy drink as well. Monster in a smaller soda can. I was disgusted.
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Uhm, a decent pasta sauce should count as vegetable... in case you mean a tomato sauce there.
Lightly fry some onions, garlic, celery and carrot in olive oil, add peeled tomato cubes, let simmer - no matter how long. Short gives a fresh, summery zingy taste, long gives you that settled, autumny thick sauce. Salt, pepper, some basil. Done.
Of course that refers to a decent spaghetti sauce. But a caterer that takes a contract for a couple of hundreds of meals per day and can't prepare that should be flogged,
Re:U turn (Score:5, Insightful)
More transparency is always a good thing.
Re:U turn (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I would probably be pretty pissed off if I was catching all the heat for the school district's poor meal choices. It's not like the lunchroom workers get to choose what the kids are served, they just prepare it. At least, that's how it is here in the US in my own experiences, maybe in the UK it's different and the individual schools have more autonomy?
Growing up in Philly, we ate what was called "satellite lunches", which were nothing more than prepackaged meals made by some private company. They literally served us a white box with "food" in it on a tray. Our school didn't even have a proper kitchen, just some ovens to heat them up. They were fucking nasty as shit, too...I bet prisoners ate better then we were. The fried chicken was especially gross, because we could smell it throughout the school in the period just before lunch, so as soon as someone caught a whiff and said "Aw, man, friend chicken again?" a collective groan went through the entire building.
I would have brown-bagged it but we were poor so I was on reduced lunch and thus forced to eat the crap by my mother.
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I think its time to forgive her, bro :)
Of course...she was a single-mother with zero help from my drug-addicted father, working two jobs over 16-hour days to provide for us. I admit, I was pretty bitter about it growing up, seeing as how I almost never even saw her face-to-face for days at a stretch (we communicated mostly through notes on the fridge) and I had a young brother to care for when other kids spent their days after school playing Nintendo, but now that I'm an adult, I understand completely that she would have rather been home with u
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Dem m00se bytes cAn be pretti nasti, tooooo.
Re:U turn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:U turn (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:U turn (Score:4, Informative)
That's good news. I wondered why they told this girl to stop in the first place because the food she photographed actually looks both healthy and tasty, so what was the problem?
It's variable. Scroll through the May page from the bottom: http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/2012_05_01_archive.html [blogspot.co.uk] -- some is fine, some is pretty bad.
The council's response in the BBC article claims that there are often better options available. However, that a child can choose an awful option suggests there is still a problem (at least, it is if you think the school should only provide healthy food).
Re:U turn (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:U turn (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the British authorities shouldn't be forced to work with a "looking over your shoulder" effect on them. That situation is very stressful and will make you paranoid. I'm glad the British authorities understand the awful stress of constantly being monitored and surveilled.
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Re:U turn (Score:5, Insightful)
Not saying banning the girl's camera was a good move or that something productive could not come from scrutiny, just saying I could see why they would be worried even if they had done nothing wrong/bad/poor.
Protip - If you have a problem with the general public scrutinizing your every action at work, don't work for the general public.
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blame the press
http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/news/2012/jun/statement-school-meals-argyll-and-bute-council [argyll-bute.gov.uk]
But we all must also accept that there is absolutely no place for the type of inaccurate and abusive attack on our catering and dining hall staff, such as we saw in one newspaper yesterday which considerably inflamed the situation. That, of course, was not the fault of the blog, but of the paper.
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It's incredible they even end there. I can't imagine a local councilmen getting re-elected after deciding that an incompetent cook's job is more important than children's nutrition.
Congrats on a relevant first post!
incompetent or poor ingredients / equipment / time (Score:3)
incompetent or poor ingredients / equipment / time tables.
Maybe they are useing poor ingredients with under sized equipment with a time table does not let them put out grade A food.
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Re:incompetent or poor ingredients / equipment / t (Score:5, Insightful)
>which means that somebody needs to be fired.
Why is it that the answer to everything seems to be to fire someone?
If the cafeteria equipment is sub-par, why can't the person in charge simply be told to get better equipment instead of being fired?
Is this a common approach to problem solving in most companies?
Bug tracker not easy to use? Fire someone.
Windows has an occasional crash? Fire somebody.
There was a brownout and you didn't have enough diesel for the backup generators? Fire the whole IT dept.
Re:U turn (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't, by any means, excuse them from the original decision to force someone to take down their website.
Their back-pedalling now the case has publicity only shows how out-of-touch they are with the world. I'd love to know who was personally responsibly for this decision.
We're all used to national governments trying to get their greasy control-freak hands on our internet, but now councils are doing it! Stick to water supply, sewerage and rates - keep away from the internet. It's none of your business, and you don't understand it. Controlling the internet is controlling our speech.
UK numbers for the council:
Phone: 01546 602127
Text: 07624808798
Complaints: http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/council-and-government/complaints [argyll-bute.gov.uk]
Re:U turn (Score:5, Informative)
That's not what happened at all. They didn't force her to take down her website, they just told her she couldn't bring her camera to school. Still a stupid move, but not the same as what you are alleging.
Re:U turn (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Calling for roadside assistance (Score:5, Insightful)
Do the same thing I did in the days before ubiquitous mobile devices: walk.
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all changed now (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently the Chief of the council was on radio 4 just now and he has reverted the ban live on air. It remains to be seen if this filters down correctly!
Free speech (Score:3)
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The pupil had a creative project involving writing and the school serioulsy decided to try and stop it. In my days it would have been highly applauded!
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Informative)
That was not school who banned her but the council. The school supported it, but the council was embarrassed when it was revealed how crappy food the pupils are eating, so they tried to gag her.
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure about the UK, but the U.S. courts have repeatedly upheld that students do not have free speech. The case Morse v. Frederick [wikipedia.org] comes to mind, otherwise known as the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case.
Long story short, the students were released from school early so they could watch the torch pass from the 2002 Winter Olympics, and Joseph Fredrick, a student at the school, along with friends, held up a banner they'd made earlier that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus". He was suspended for 5 days (later increased to the maximum 10 days after quoting Thomas Jefferson, which is hysterical), sued, and lost several times. School speech [wikipedia.org] can be regulated both on and off campus; Frederick was not technically in school at the time of his banner (as they'd been dismissed) and he was also standing across the street from the school, thus not technically on campus, but in view of those that were.
Then, of course, are the myriad cases cropping up over the last few years where student's Facebook posts are getting them suspended [mashable.com] Just a few months ago a 12-year-old girl was interrogated at length by the administration at her school, with police officers present (but not her parents, of course), and ultimately forced to give up her Facebook password [telegraph.co.uk].
If this girl had been here in the U.S., she'd probably already be charged with some form of terrorism by DHS and thrown in a cell with murderers, rapists, and people that upload HD rips of hit movies to the internet.
Re:Free speech (Score:4, Informative)
The Human Rights Act applies to everyone (not just adults, not just British people, not just in British territory) and includes the right to Freedom of Expression.
There are also extra Children's human rights http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/parents/parentsrights/dg_4003313 [direct.gov.uk]
from 15 January 1992, when the treaty came into force, every child in the UK has been entitled to over 40 specific rights. These include:
* the right to have their views respected, and to have their best interests considered at all times
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
If this girl had been here in the U.S., she'd probably already be charged with some form of terrorism by DHS and thrown in a cell with murderers, rapists, and people that upload HD rips of hit movies to the internet.
C'mon dude, you made a lot of good points, why did you have to spoil it with outrageous hyperbole? It's one of the most obvious rules of trying to prove a point - people judge your argument as a whole, so if you throw in a crapton of obvious nonsense, people don't take the good parts seriously.
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I had never heard of this case so I became outraged, and read up on it. You posted that "the students were released from school early" which is not true. They were not released from school at all. Instead, the students were escorted across the street, as part of a school event, including supervision by teachers. That's a huge difference. You can walk across the street and be free of school rules. But you can't go on a school field trip, with school teachers, and expect not to follow school rules.
Toothless (Score:3)
When will they learn (Score:3)
The more you try to hide something, the more attention it will attract.
Re:When will they learn (Score:5, Insightful)
Well yes and no. How much do we hear about people in prison in China for political "crimes".
Re:When will they learn (Score:4, Insightful)
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In cases like this, yes. All too often, oppressors of all kinds are successful. It's good to have cases like this to remind people that they actually can fight back and win, sometimes.
summary error... (Score:5, Informative)
the blog didn't make catering staff fear for their jobs.
the press reaction in the UK has made catering staff fear for their jobs
Martha was blogging what she had for dinner NOT what the full menu was.
the press ommited this detail and pitchforks started being sharpened as it appears Martha wasn't picking the best of what was on offer (health wise)
all that said, i think it's a bloody shame the council have stopped given that the school actually encourages children to talk about their diet and this girl's only taken that training to the next logical conclusion of sharing with the internet.
Re:summary error... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody else reads the articles, why would you expect the person who wrote the summary to have read it??
did the 3rd party catering / food service push for (Score:2)
did the 3rd party catering / food service push for this??
fear for their jobs may put at that or they are just poorly funded and take the heat for poor food that they don't have a lot of control over.
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OK too lazy to look up that blog, but if the meal providers are afraid of their jobs, then I'd say that implies they know their food is of poor quality.
All they have to do is make their food decent. That is: reasonably healthy and balanced, reasonably fresh, and reasonably tasty. No need for five-star dinner quality, it's school dinners, but that also means you shouldn't serve them crap.
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All they have to do is make their food decent. That is: reasonably healthy and balanced, reasonably fresh, and reasonably tasty. No need for five-star dinner quality, it's school dinners, but that also means you shouldn't serve them crap.
On this topic: the girl and her dad inquired the school about the type of chicken and sausages they serve, and apparently they are "safe to keep for up to three years". That says it about the quality of the food for me.
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Before taking the "It doesn't spoil in 3 days!" as an indicator of quality, you need to first look at what kind of food it is. Sausage is not a specific food, it is a class of foods. No doubt some ty
there is very little meat in these gym mats (Score:5, Funny)
there is very little meat in these gym mats
Re:there is very little meat in these gym mats (Score:5, Funny)
but they go so well will a tall glass of malk.
Bad publicity? (Score:5, Insightful)
The public have a fundamental right to see what their tax dollars (or pounds in this case) are doing, whether that is detailed information about Afghanistan and Iraq or school lunches.
Yum (Score:5, Informative)
The food she photographed looks pretty amazing compared with what I recall eating in primary school.
Re:Yum (Score:4, Funny)
I honestly don't remember the school food in Georgia, though I do remember bringing my own lunch and awful lot.
Upstate New York we had some choice. My favorite was actually a fried brown chicken puck sandwich. Except the week I got strep, then the fried bits were like swallowing broken glass (The subsequent visit to the school nurse was how I found out I had strep.)
I'm pretty sure even the spam-in-dioxin was still healthier than my college diet of ramen and pop tarts. The pop tarts were for vitamin C, you see, otherwise you get scurvy.
I wasn't the least bit surprised when the pink slime story came out a while back. In a few of the districts I attended, canned pet food would have been an appetizing improvement.
NeverSeconds (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's awesome she named her blog "NeverSeconds". I always remember being left hungry in middle/high school by the paltry lunches we got, to the point where I started bringing in my own every day. The worst was pizza day - you got the equivalent of one piece of pizza, a drink, and a "salad" (actually a couple pieces of lettuce and some shredded carrot). That was it. I guess it all worked out, because after the long lines, including many line-cutters, you only got about 10 minutes to eat anyhow.
My point is: school lunches suck! I fully support this girl in her efforts.
Links to blog and stories (Score:5, Informative)
This may be helpful:
The blog: http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/ [blogspot.co.uk]
BBC story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-18454800 [bbc.co.uk]
Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/school-dinner-blogger-martha-payne-photo-ban-overturned-7854487.html [independent.co.uk]
Council rebuttal: http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/news/2012/jun/statement-school-meals-argyll-and-bute-council [argyll-bute.gov.uk]
Streisand in real time (Score:3)
You can actually watch the Streisand effect happening in real time as the hit counter at the bottom of her page shoots up. Heading for 3 million pretty quickly :-)
I hope the ban gets overturned. (Score:3)
I know what would have happened at my school after such a ban. EVERY kid would start taking pictures of their meals and posting them.
I wish someone would explain to me why the UK is becoming so totalitarian these days.
metal utensiles, including knives (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it refreshing that she's given actual, metal utensils, including a knife.
I'm 30 now, so you can use that for a frame of reference. Back in elementary school, we were also given metal utensils, including knives. somewhere around middle school/high school (I think it was when I was entering high school), Minnesota passed a zero tolerance knife policy for the grade schools. Now, even a butter knife would get you immediately expelled from school, the cafeteria switched to plastic-ware and no longer had even plastic knives.
I'm glad to see that not everyone is insane.
The charity (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know where you went to school, but the "drivel" you refer to looks really good to me. The food is visually appealing, and looks varied in texture. The presentation is pretty good. In other words, for mass produced industrial cafeteria food it's darn good.
Try running a kitchen before you spout.
When you're given a budget where you have to produce a meal for less than $2 and this includes your labor costs, and meet all the "nutritional needs" and make stuff that people actually want to eat, you real