You can’t legislate purity, and why should you try?
I hope Jamie Oliver read this in today’s papers - and all the people who have told me they think he’s a “hero” for trying to legislate kids into healthier diets. When it comes to food, I line up behind Nigella:
Dieting claims almost a moral status when health comes into play. With what piety and smugness do the dietetically pure wave away those wicked, fat-clogged foods and show us, sinners all, the way, the truth, and the Lite…
I don’t disparage the shallow concerns of the ordinarily vain, which, after all, I share. What I hate is all this new-age voodoo about eating, the notion that foods are either harmful or healing, that a good diet makes a good person and that that person is necessarily lean, limber, toned and fit. Quite apart from anything else, I don’t see the muscular morality argument. Why should a concern for your physical health be seen as a sign of virtue? Such a view seems to me in danger of fusing Nazism (with its ideological cult of physical perfection) and Puritanism (with its horror of the flesh and belief in salvation through denial).
There’s no better way to make a kid want something than to tell him it’s ‘bad’ and that he’s not supposed to have it. So why does anyone fool themselves that banning this stuff - none of which is actually ‘bad’, but better in moderation - is more wise than teaching kids about balance?
Filed under: Children, Food, Law, Life, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend
I line up behind Nigella too.
I like Nigella, but I disagree with the tone of the DailyMail article cited, and further disagree with the Nigella extract you cite when applied to kids in schools and the context of this discussion.
Regarding das DailyMail article, I don’t agree with the headline assertion that providing kids with food that I would actually eat myself is turning them *into* junk food addicts; I would hazard that kids and parents are just reacting because the kids *are* to some limited extent already addicted, the parents can’t cope with the resultant mess at home because they aren’t invested, and moreover any media spotlight makes for interest, excitement and 15 minutes of fame.
I will be more interested to go back there 9 months from now and see if Mums are still poking fast food through the bars. I wonder if their outrage has staying power…
As for the general tone of Daily Mail coverage, what do you expect? I suspect they are miffed at the lack of apocalyptic breakdown of British social structure which was meant to be brought about by liberalisation of licensing hours.
Re: Nigella, I actually agree with what she *says* in your quote: people should not be beholden to looking like [insert name of supermodel du jour] in order to be happy, nor should one be considered virtuous for having various dietary or other moral hangups.
But having gone to a school with a psychotic Italian chef who cared about our diets and was beloved of all the students, I see nothing “New Age” or “Fascist” about taking kids who’ve never seen one before and forcing broccoli down their throats occasionally. If that’s fascist, then so is forcing knowledge into kids’ minds, and getting the little toerags to think and make to choices for themselves.
If ever I had kids, they’d be eating properly from day zero; but are people out there who don’t know, aren’t that lucky, or lack parents who prioritise a decent diet. Stomping a foot and saying that Jamie Oliver is denying the free market is all very principled, but “what good food looks like” should be as much a foundation of youth as “how to form a sentence” or “how to calculate small change”.
Alec, you appear to be advocating moderation…so are agreeing with me rather vigorously. What Jamie Oliver is pushing on schools and on parents is something altogether different - a ban on anything deemed ‘junk food’ by the British state.
Yep. There’s two ways of dealing with telling small kids not to play with knives. 1) wait until they cut themselves. 2) ban it outright. the latter has the mystique of the forbidden, but my parents went for the former and i still bear the scars. with food, i back jamie.
wait nine months and the hoohah will blow over.
Alec, first you agree that moderation is key, and then you say you back Jamie, who has no time for moderation and only for all-out bans. Which is it?
I see no contradiction in my beliefs. I’d be happy with chips on friday and an outright ban on sweets, soda and other stuff. Possibly *more* restrictive. I don’t see that teaching “don’t stuff yourself with crap” necessitates keeping crap in the school food supply so that kids can practice.
Okay, so you believe in teaching theories but not practicalities. Can’t see the sense in it myself, but…okay.
It is obvious what Alec believes: the state, not parents, should decide what children eat. But then my view is that parents who send their children to state schools have only themselves to blame for putting their children under such a high degree of political control.
Putting words into my mouth, Perry writes that I believe “the state, not parents, should decide what children eat”; to which I add: “at school, yes, subject to medical or (alas) recognised religious dietary constraints.”
I have an inclination to force-feed lard to vegetarians, but that’s not a political belief, that’s just something I believe might improve humanity.
You might call it a “personal beef”.
I consider my above-stated position to be orthogonal with the State rather than the Parents decreeing the curriculum. If people choose to opt their kids out of the whole schooling thing, that’s their business - although I consider that foolish, too. I went to an all-boys catholic school and have borne the scars of lack of social integration skills for years since.