The politics of choice

Promoting Healthy Food Choices for Children 

The only way Jamie Oliver got the kids to eat healthier school meals in Greenwich was to remove burgers and chips… obviously. We don’t need anyone to tell us this, but in research commissioned by the government in July 2004, it was found that the majority of children in secondary schools were not making healthy food choices. Efforts to promote healthy eating had little positive influence on pupil choices, and it was found that unrestricted choice of foods at lunchtime was associated with unhealthy food choices. Unsurprisingly, restricted choice was associated with healthier eating.

Why? One reason is that eating junk food is associated with being “naughty” and rebellious - an interesting proposition as you’re approaching your teens. But there are specific physiological factors involved, too. Conditioned from an early age to consume highly sugared food and drink, children crave their next sugar “hit” like drug addicts searching for heroin. To make matters worse, high sugar, high yeast diets and antibiotic therapy disturb the delicate bacterial flora in gut and mouth, leading to a distortion of taste. Once this happens, many children simply cannot bear the taste of fresh fruit or vegetables and seek out sugary, yeasty food instead.

Burgers and chips seem irresistible as we become increasingly resistant to a hormone called leptin which  is supposed to tells us when we are full. Some foods offer mood-enhancing molecules of their own, such as chocolate. These are just some examples of the addictive nature of junk food. So, when children are faced with choice, the wrong choices are easily made because they have already been harmed by modern food and are unable to make the right decision.

Using the politics of choice is a useful cover for inactivity. Choice may be a good concept when it provides consumers with products they want at the lowest possible price. But choice should not necessarily apply to food as cheap low quality food directly affects our health.

Vested interests have hijacked the concept of choice and turned it into an end in itself. However, choice can only ever be a means to an end. Once choice becomes an end not a means, its beneficial effect becomes entirely reversed, a cover for shoddiness, poor quality and ill-health: “Never mind the quality, just look at all the choice”.

For choice to mean anything, we require perfect information: but as parents and children don’t know what is in the food they are eating, schools rather than pupils have to make informed choices. Children don’t go to school to expect choice. They go to school to be taught and nourished.

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