Schools go healthy,…

Great news: School lunches in England at least are becoming more healthy, according to this article on the BBC News website. This must be good news for the children - and crucially the government.

But while the government will undoubtedly be pleased with todays headlines, there is still a lot of room for improvement: After all, while it is good news that one meal a day will be better, it would be foolish to think that this would eliminate all the problems with obesity and bad food.
While Jamie Oliver’s campaign was great for highlighting the problems in schools and getting the government to spend a few pence extra every day for each school lunch to avoid draining the resources of the NHS with problems later, it just simply will not make the basic problem go away (nor did it really change the taste of the children).
Why? The solution is simple: It isn’t only school lunches that make children obese, but it is the snacks (that children eat ouside the schools), breakfasts (or lack thereof), dinners and the lack of physical activity both in schools and outside of schools… all together.
So, while the change in the lunch menu is a good step in the right direction, fighting obesity can’t stop there: Education of (crucially) both children and parents - and more high profile social marketing campaigns must be on the menu to really make a change.

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