School Dinners

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="SaligoBay"][quote user="Jon D"]

 According to an article I read some months ago in “Liberation” (no, I don’t buy it – it was on the bar), France still has the leanest teenagers in Europe.

OK, you can’t trust newspapers, but I do wonder if the French

preoccupation with a “proper” school meal might have something to do

with this.

[/quote]

Well, in my son's collège it's easy - the food is so bad that they

hardly eat anything!   It's a good way to stay thin.

It's interesting that from the outside France is considered a thin

country, but from the inside it's seen as a rapidly fattening

country.  

 

[/quote]

Libération, surely, is a French newspaper. It was written in French, in

a French bar, in France, so they must have been looking in from the

inside, not in from the outside.

I've often considered writing a diet book that involved a plan that

made the food inedible, but I was worried the take-up rate might not be

so hot.

[SaligoBay]

Strangely enuff, la Libération today says "Les Français ont grossi". 

http://www.liberation.fr/interactif/question/205351.FR.php

[Alexis]

Latest....BBC radio programme I'm listening to had comments about JO being the size of a baby elephant on his programme last night which wasn't thought very good publicity for a healthy eating programme.

This mornings Ouest France headline was about nearly 6 million French obese.  One in ten Bretons is obese.  So fat is here.

I will agree about the increasing size of mainly woman and girls in the UK.  Every time I go back they seem fatter.  It is so bad, I feel thin.

I have never seen JO.  Yet something else to look forward to.

 

[Miki]

[quote user="Deimos"]Sorry Miki, Dick asked why I could not tolerate

him so I answered. You may not agree - fine. No need to start being

nasty because I say I don't like somebody. I openly admitted that my

opinion might be subject to bias and the comment was a small addition

to a general observation and guess what, 

Give it a rest. You are saying more about yourself than anything else.

Ian[/quote]

Firstly..................."no need to start being nasty" ? I think that really interprets, as "you didn't agree with me, so your nasty" ?

"..........Dick and Miki started leaping on what I post yet again"

So paranoia is back.  Show the proof oh paranoid one. I didn't

agree, so ? Please note, that is what a forum is about. You come up

with a ridiculous unfounded statement, still to be backed up, I and

others didn't agree, so does that mean, that we are all nasty people ?

Please do tell what it says about me, that Miki didn't agree with

Deimos, so he must be shamed ?  There have been some people on

here that I can say I have not always agreed with but that's the way it

can be, generally it sorts itself out but with you, it's always like

talking with a childish cry baby. Any time anyone disagrees with you

out comes; "it's really not fair".

Yet I quite often see you going around the site picking faults and

arguments, which you then often have to defend in your own infantile

way. DON'T post if you only want people to agree, if you do post, then

you must expect that others may disagree and it is not just Dick and I

that do not agree with you on this matter.

As Croixblanches said and I totally agree, I also do not give a stuff

whether you like the man or not, it is your slant on why and what he is

doing that I disagreed with. And if that is what you call nasty, then

the playground sure must have been a hard time for you, sometime in the

past !

[Cassis]

Well, France may not have Jamie but it has Cyril Lignac.  Having already done his take on Jamie's  would-be chefs programme, Wor Cyril is back this Friday with "Vive la Cantine", a wholly new idea where he visits school canteens (Pas-de-Calais and Normandie this week) to put the Cooks and Kids on the road to healthy school meals.  Mistral pointed this out earlier (I just noticed).  If you want to catch it, it's on M6 this Friday at 20.50h.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="SaligoBay"]

Strangely enuff, la Libération today says "Les Français ont grossi". 

http://www.liberation.fr/interactif/question/205351.FR.php

[/quote]

And yet the two positions are not contradictory. While 6 million obese

is hardly a cause for celebration, it amounts to 10% of the population.

Relatively, that is not high. Still serious, though.

[nimportequoi]

JonD, I love JO's fish pie too, it's delicious and well within my cooking capabilies!

I like the way the kids eat in my daughters maternelle - they all sit boy girl boy girl and they know how to use a knife and fork and behave at the table. They have good, varied meals, chips occasionally, but not every day, and they also eat things like beetroot, grated carrot and grapefruit. I was talking to a headmistress from a UK school the other day who said that in her primary school there were many children (6 & 7 year olds) who only knew how to eat with their fingers, they had never been taught how to use a knife and fork and presumably at home only ate the sort of food that didn't require their use. So I think JO is doing a good job in trying to sort out the school dinner situation in the UK. The next thing is to try and get families to eat together instead of most kids taking their meals upstairs to watch TV on their own in their bedrooms.

[Val_2]

I get the impression that many UK homes have done away with or don't even own a table and chairs these days as the families you see in documentories or in soaps are always in front of the TV on the sofa or floor with trays.As for taking food upstairs, that is something I have and will never allow in my home.

[YCCMB]

Tell you what, Val_2, I'm not surprised that many UK homes don't own a table and chairs these days. I speak as someone actively seeking to buy a dining table and chairs right now. I was hoping to give our existing ones to my son as he leaves home for his own flat. However, I have been trawling the shops and the internet for weeks now, and every table I find is truly vast, and seats at least 6. Our dining room in the UK is quite small, and I just can't find a table smaller than 150cm long at minimum, and many are longer, or extend to up to 2m30.Apart from these, the only alternatives are all tiny. We're a family of 4, and when we do entertain, it's rare that we need to seat more than 6 or 8 people and that's usually only twice a year. I'd like a table that is shorter and wider, with the option to add an extension leaf when required. Can I find one? Not so far. I can imagine that many families in smaller houses with small dining rooms or just dining kitchens simply can't find a table that they can comfortably fit in their homes!

[KathyC]

[quote user="Alexis"]

Latest....BBC radio programme I'm listening to had comments about JO being the size of a baby elephant on his programme last night which wasn't thought very good publicity for a healthy eating programme.

[/quote]

I think you'll find that he was wearing a fat suit to make a point and aid publicity.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="SusanAH"]

JonD, I love JO's fish pie too, it's delicious and well within my cooking capabilies!

[/quote]

Try taking out the sweated spinich and replace it with finely sliced leeks sautéed slowly in melted butter....

[Gardian]

[quote user="SusanAH"]

I like the way the kids eat in my daughters maternelle - they all sit boy girl boy girl and they know how to use a knife and fork and behave at the table. They have good, varied meals, chips occasionally, but not every day, and they also eat things like beetroot, grated carrot and grapefruit. I was talking to a headmistress from a UK school the other day who said that in her primary school there were many children (6 & 7 year olds) who only knew how to eat with their fingers, they had never been taught how to use a knife and fork and presumably at home only ate the sort of food that didn't require their use. So I think JO is doing a good job in trying to sort out the school dinner situation in the UK. The next thing is to try and get families to eat together instead of most kids taking their meals upstairs to watch TV on their own in their bedrooms.

[/quote]

Susan's post just sums up the whole thing for me. Meat, veg, fruit, variation.  The 'plat du jour' concept, but making it sound like something special (which it often is, by the way).  The knife and fork anecdote is utterly believable and well .......desperate.

Nobody's saying that everything is perfect in France school meal-wise, but how many of us have been over here and witnessed youngsters being involved in a family meal?  All of us, and many times.  On how many occasions have those youngsters been badly behaved who have been French?  A much lower proportion than other nationalities, I'll bet.

Fault?  Not the kids.  (In this instance), not the Government.  You won't need three guesses!  

[YCCMB]

My last "family" meal in France with the neighbours brought home to me how big a gap exists between French and British kids (sometimes, not always) at mealtimes. An evening meal with our neighbours and their son, d-i-l and grandkids (4 and 7). We were having a starter of Charentais melon with pineau. The youngest grandchild apparently doesn't like melon, so he sat quite calmly and quietly at the end of the table with a small plate.........of oysters. Not a slice of pizza or a kid's portion of chicken nuggets or a few crisps. I was amazed. No reason why I should have been, I suppose, but I couldn't imagine a British 4-year-old doing the same.

[Alexis]

Cyril was on M6 last night.  I watched most of it.  The French children seemed just like their British friends!  Bleugh!  Vegetables!

(Don't forget I have never seen JO and his crusade.)

The money allowed for each meal was derisory.  The dinner ladies had no equipment to help them use fresh vegetables - all morning to purée potatoes for example.  The cook in Normandy didn't seem to want to change.  She was quite happy to use frozen or powdered products.  One of the meals there Cyril spent .81€ instead of the allowed .50€.  (I must admit to not really looking there but I think it is 1.50€ a meal.  It couldn't just be .50€, or could it?)

Of course, it being the telly, everything turned out well in the end but I suspect he will have problems when he turns up at the next school and meets the teenagers.  He certainly seemed a bit clueless to start with because he couldn't believe the children ate so badly.  He seemed to think they ate the same as he would.  They didn't even know the names of the vegetables ...but they knew that they didn't like them.

I loved my school dinners in the Olden Days.  Meat - we all hated liver - a veg and potato.  (This being before rice and pasta stopped being exotic.)  Lovely, lovely meat pies.  Then pudding and pink custard.  All for a Bob.

[Viv]

The UK governent could cut Family Allowance and give all kids a quality free lunch. At least the kids would be getting something positive from it and we all know that its those parents that spend their allowance on fags, booze and other rubbish that worry less about what their kids are eating.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="Diva Star"]

The UK governent could cut Family Allowance

and give all kids a quality free lunch. At least the kids would be

getting something positive from it and we all know that its those

parents that spend their allowance on fags, booze and other rubbish

that worry less about what their kids are eating.

[/quote]

Maybe not a bad idea, and not just for the UK (plenty of daytime gin

drinkers here in France too!). It would almost certainly meet with

furious

opposition, but if the same benefit is given in kind (i.e. foodstuffs

in some form), then why not? I'm sure that many parents do use the

money as it was intended - to the benefit of their children, that is -

but given the ever increasing importance of "me" I am equally sure that

there are many who just fritter it. Since some people refuse to take

proper  responsibility perhaps it is reasonable for the state to

take it for them, at least as far as the broader wealfare of children

is concerned.

[SaligoBay]

[quote user="Croixblanches"]No reason why I should have been, I suppose, but I couldn't imagine a British 4-year-old doing the same.[/quote]

We had one staying with us in August who didn't like melon but would clear a plate of mussels in record time. 

I guess it depends who you know.

I'm amazed at the home diet of French children.  A plate of plain boiled pasta "with a little bit of butter" is pretty standard and seen as a perfectly adequate meal.   Parsemer it with a bit of Emmental and they'll think they're in heaven.

Funny business, food. [:)]

[YCCMB]

A very funny business. My eldest's last-girlfriend-but-six came for dinner and I was advised in advance that she was a vegetarian. "No problem!" said I, and produced a huge pile of various veg. roasted with oil, herbs and garlic, and some couscous. She left 95% of the food, on the grounds that she didn't recognise half the veg and had never heard of couscous. The most exotic thing there was fennel, everything else was pretty ordinary, everyday veg. She wasn't a stick insect, so she must survive somehow, but I can't imagine her diet being exactly varied[8-)]

[Hoddy]

SusanAH wrote -

"I was talking to a headmistress from a UK school the other day who said that in her primary school there were many children (6 & 7 year olds) who only knew how to eat with their fingers, they had never been taught how to use a knife and fork and presumably at home only ate the sort of food that didn't require their use."

This reminds me of the time, some years ago now, when I was in the school dining room on the first day of term, sitting opposite one of our new boys aged eleven.

He'd chosen chips, of course, was embarrassed to be sitting opposite Miss and aware that he had to use a fork at least. He simply couldn't manage it and in the end resorted to picking the chips up with his fingers, sticking them on to the fork and then transferring them to his mouth. Poor kid.

Hoddy

[Cassis]

I don't get it.  Don't the parents of these unfortunate children know how to use a knife and fork and pass these basic skills on to their children any more?  If not, why not and where did it all go wrong?

[Val_2]

Its now got so bad in my son's Lycée that there are not enough plastic carafes to go round and for the third day this week none of his table got any water again with their lunch. If they ask they just get a shrug. That is pretty diabolicol when the kids don't even get the basic needs.Thank god I don't have to pay for his meals.

[Dick Smith]

Funny - I responded to a post about a boy eating with his fingers and it seems to have disappeared. What happened?

[Cassis]

Was it not a boy eating his fish fingers?

[Dick Smith]

No, they were his fingers.

[Cassis]

He must have been very hungry.