10.18.2006

Mmmm, English Food.

It seems as if the Brits are similarly attempting to provide their schoolchildren better food. You see, not only is Britain one of our closest allies/lapdogs, they also share our expanding waistlines. Oh, and their food stinks to begin with.

The menu changes at Rawmarsh are being replicated across Britain, which, much like the United States, is grappling with the issue of how to regulate school food to improve children’s health. Although Britons collectively are not yet as fat as Americans, they are the fattest people in Europe. If current trends continue, the British Medical Association says, by 2020 some 30 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls here will be clinically obese.

But alas, as I've learned in law school, if there's an incentive, people will always find ways around any rule.

The fancy new menu at the Rawmarsh School here?

“It’s rubbish,” said Andreas Petrou, an 11th grader. Instead, en route to school recently, he was enjoying a north of England specialty known as a chip butty: a French-fries-and-butter sandwich doused in vinegar.
...
Mrs. Critchlow has become a notorious figure in Britain. In September she and another mother — alarmed, they said, because their children were going hungry — began selling contraband hamburgers, fries and sandwiches to as many as 50 students a day, passing the food through the school gates.
...
But here in Rotherham, Andreas Petrou insists that no amount of explaining will convince him that a French fry sandwich is not a decent meal. If confronted with the school food, he said, he will do what all his friends do: gather as much bread as he can, “put half an inch of butter on each slice,” and call it lunch.

[ed: emphasis added]

Delicious. This reminds me of the dinner a previous roommate of mine used to make: butter on crackers. I won't mention names, but his mother is referenced in the banner at the top of this page.

posted by brian at 10:26 AM | Permalink

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