Oliver a Sir or Saint?

[anotheoldgit]

Will they make Jamie Oliver a Sir or the patron saint of food?

It took Oliver to highlight junk food school dinners, although Chips and Burgers had been the staple diet on School Dinner menus for years.

Now the latest food trepidation he has highlighted, is the horrible existence and final demise suffered by "Battery Chickens", to produce the so called �2.00 chicken most of us purchase from the our Supermarkets, yet this practice has been on going for many years. Why has it took a present day media celebrity to highlight these points, when they have been happening for years and no one has been particular concerned before?

If we all were to only buy the more expensive free range Eggs or Chickens, would we have any guarantee that these would more humanly produced, or just another method of the supermarkets obtaining even yet more money out of us? Would it not be better for the government to ban "Factory Farming" or is this just a utopian dream?

The same could be applied to the ever-growing problem of our obese young. To change what our children eat for their midday meal only goes part of the way. Why doesn't the Government ban fast food outlets, or at least govern the ever-increasing numbers opening up on our high streets? We managed for years before, with just the corner "Chippy" that provided an occasional cheap fast meal, not many fat kids around then. Another controversial measure would be introducing after school hours cookery lessons for parents.

[SeaJayPea]

Don't buy meat from supermarkets is the answer. I know it's difficult these days, but the big retailers have their eyes on one thing only - their profits. All else is secondary.

[Kromovaracun]

Cookery lessons wouldn't be controversial unless you made them compulsory (which probably wouldn't be necessary anyway) or if you just included them as part of secondary education (as quite a lot of the more profitable private schools do). If they were implemented like that, I can't really see any problem that the bulk of people would have with them.

As for your proposal that the government ban fast-food outlets, not only does government control of the national diet smack terribly of totalitarianism (which you seem to lean towards anyway) but it also flies in the face of the simple, ugly, but undeniable fact that people do like fast food.

Yes, there are a lot of people who just eat it out of convenience or for budgetary reasons (I'm not going to talk about majority/minority ratios), but there are a helluvalot of people who eat it because they like it. And no, they're not brainwashed into it either. They like it. Plus the fact that - like most things - it's pretty harmless if consumed in moderation and this is where the problem lies for a lot of people.

Thus it's really a matter of education. Which is kinda what you proposed.