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Food for Thought ...

"I don't like that!"

How often does your child say this to you?

Would they "like it" if you combine it with something they do like? (We will call this "friendly food").

In our recipes page we have some examples of ways of creating new combinations using less familiar or un-tried ingredients with "friendly food" to encourage children to try something new.

"Have you ever tried it?"

As Tami says - “You didn't know you liked chocolate until you tried it!” 

In our experience it is not about taking away their "friendly food" - but with the introduction of these new, yet simple recipes children are given a more varied diet.

The trick is not to expect change overnight. How would you feel if someone took away your favourite dish and replaced with a plate of something you didn't recognise? We pride ourselves on bringing our children up with routine and familiarity - so change should be gradual, allowing the child to feel they are still in their comfort zone.

Here comes the science bit ...

What influences whether a person "likes it" or not? We believe that the main physical influences are:

• Taste: There are five basic tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and savoury) and they are detected by the taste buds of the tongue.

• Smell: Smell seems to be the main influence on the flavour of a food. It is the detection of chemical compounds in the air through the nose - and there are almost limitless types of smell.

• Texture: Also called "mouthfeel" this is the way food feels in mouth. Factors such as Hardness, Wetness, Slipperiness, Graininess or Smoothness of food will influence how a person perceives it.

Fundamentally taste is all a matter of individual perception - both physical and mental. We are all different. We don't all like the same things. Some people like beetroot and others don't. That's OK. It is natural. Sometimes we "think" we won't like something, and when encouraged to try it we find that it is actually nice.

If you read the ingredients lists of ready meals sold in supermarkets you will see many oddly-named chemicals and E-numbers. These typically are added to make the food look good (colourings), taste good (flavourings), smell good (aromas) or feel good (emulsifiers etc).

Just because these are chemicals does not mean they are all "bad" or un-natural - many E-numbers are actually naturally occurring ingredients. Judicious use of simple cooking ingredients can transform healthy, but bland, food into enjoyable tasty meals.

Simplifying the decisions about healthy eating

In 2005 a study in the University of Queensland found that people can really only manage to handle up to four variables in decision making. As soon as more things have to be considered it gets too complicated. So, for example, when looking at the nutritional information on a food packet if you try and juggle more than four things in deciding which packet to buy it gets too difficult. You have the price of the food, the weight of the food, how many calories are in it, how much sugar, how much fat, does it have too much salt, does it have bad E-numbers ... and you are suddenly trying to juggle seven bits of information, and that is too many to handle.

So what do we do? Well, there is the old joke that men are bad at multi-tasking and women are bad at prioritising ... but in reality each person does a combination of both. Some people give up and pick just one variable - say the price - and go with that. Others might look at two or three things - the price, the calories, maybe the brand name etc. Some put more weight on the price (maybe because they have a limited budget) but also look at the calories and choose from there.

Food is Fun believe that there is far too much information about what is food good for you or bad for you for people to easily handle. Have a look at the School Food Trust's Nutritional Standards. There are 14 of them, each of which has numerous sub-categories of guidance. This is not to belittle their work, it is great, but making sense of it is not easy!

Each individual will have different priorities. If the budget is tight then price is going to be key. If body weight is critical then calories can be the most important. If one has allergies, or intolerances, then specific ingredients are going to be the most important. For every individual we need to apply common sense to food choices. But above all of these we believe that we mustn't lose sight of the fact that food needs to be enjoyed. Eating shouldn't be a chore, it should be something that gives pleasure.

Or, to put it simply:

FOOD IS FUN!

Common Sense about food

“Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating” Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Peter worked in France for some time with the famous chef Joël Robuchon. He was named "chef of the century", and his cookbook contains some very common sense views about food:

• Nourishment calls for a certain balance, within each meal and from one to the next. To be healthy, then, all of us must find ways of varying what we eat.

• We may think of meat or fish as the centre of a meal, but fruit, vegetables, dairy products, and grains should find their way to every table every day.

• It is particularly important that breakfast be rich and complete - grains or cereal, dairy, and fruit. School children simply must have a good breakfast. Give them fruit or yogurt for their snack instead of chocolate bars, which have too much sugar and fat to eat every day. Make sure you are not feeding children foods with lots of hidden sugar, and save sweets and chocolate for once in a while.

• Fat carries flavour. Like sugar, it should be used sparingly but not eliminated; just a bit vastly improves a dish's taste. Vegetable oils are healthier than butter. Salt should be used in moderation (especially since today's processed foods are so full of it) but, unless you are on a special diet, it need not be harmed in your kitchen.

• In general, if you are worried about your cholesterol, you must keep an eye on your consumption of butter, cream, cheese, charcuterie, fried foods, heavy sauces, and fatty meats. Those with a family history of heart disease should do everything —  they can to reduce their risk factors; everyone else can probably maintain a safe enough cholesterol level by staying within 3 or 4 kilos of a healthy target weight and consuming risky foods only in moderation.

The UK Government

We recently had a change of government in the UK, and a potential change of policy with regard to school meals. This is the current Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, answering questions at the British Medical Association conference in Brighton on 30th June 2010:

"If we constantly are lecturing people and trying to tell them what to do, we will actually find that we might undermine and it be counterproductive in the results that we achieve. I mean ... I'll give you an example - Jamie Oliver, quite rightly, was talking about trying to improve the diet of children in schools, and improving school meals. What was the net effect? Well actually the number of children eating school meals in many of these places didn't go up, it went down. So then the schools said 'Well, look, if you're bringing packed lunches that's OK but we've got to determine what's in your packed lunches, and we've got to decide what's in it.'  To which the parents' response was 'they gave children money and actually children are spending more money outside school, on buying snacks in local shops, than they are actually spending on school meals or their packed lunches.' Net result of that is somebody says 'well the next thing we must do is we must ban shops near schools'. You know, where do we end up with this? And actually I do agree ... I completely understand ... there are many things we can do that are about changing the availability of things. Including the availability of salt in food. Absolutely we can bring it down, we have done, we will do. But at the same time none of this will work unless we change people's relationship and behaviour towards alcohol, towards cigarettes, towards food. We have to understand that this is a behaviour change programme we are engaged in and if behaviour doesn't change our likelihood is that we will fail. So it is about people accepting more responsibility and us finding new ways across government and society of encouraging people to take that responsibility and to change their behaviour, recognising the benefits to themselves but equally the benefits to society as a whole."

Jamie Oliver's response on the same day was:

"To say School Dinners hasn't worked is not just inaccurate but is also an insult to the hard work of hundreds of thousands of dinner ladies, teachers, head teachers and parent helpers who strive to feed school kids a nutritious, hot meal for 190 days of the year. Any problems that we've been having in school meals is more often than not down to continuing lack of funds for training of school catering staff. But although the minister has simplified the school dinners situation for an easy headline, he is right in one respect. Yes, people need government support to make key lifestyle changes to improve public health. What better way to show support than to invest in education so that all children can have compulsory cooking lessons and all adults can have access to a food centre which teaches core cooking skills and how to cook fresh, tasty, affordable and nutritious food? I want to see practical measures to help bring down the spiralling cost to the NHS of obesity and its related diseases - £7 billion a year at the moment."

Then at a speech to the UK Faculty of Public Health Conference, on 7th July 2010 Andrew Lansley said:

"That is why, contrary to the media reporting, I applauded Jamie Oliver’s initiative on school dinners and when he went to Rotherham – because Jamie ‘got it’. He got that it’s not just about a witch hunt against saturated fats, salt and sugars. It’s about creating a better understanding of, and relationship with, good food and diet. And even more, it’s about self-confidence – it’s about building self-esteem. When you watch the programmes – and I did watch them - they were about building self-esteem, not just about what went into the food and how you cook it. The problem was the government’s response. Instead of working with families to engage them with the idea of building a good diet together, with food they enjoy, the bureaucracy took it over and they came up with a series of rules for what was permissible in school meals. The fact is, you can’t legislate for self-esteem from Westminster. We can’t pass the Elimination of Obesity Act 2010. Turning Jamie’s campaign into a list of how often you can offer chips – whilst not rationing roast potatoes cooked in oil – doesn’t do the job. In complex policy areas like this it has become clear that government cannot simply ‘deliver’ key policy outcomes to a disengaged and passive public. We cannot solve complex problems on our own – everyone has a role to play. So how do we do that? I freely admit that none of us have all the answers. But, it’s clear that we have to find a new approach – to think new thoughts. We need a paradigm shift."

Food Is Fun agrees with both of these guys. Andrew is right, it is about behavioural change and not just about setting rules. But behaviours would not have changed if Jamie had not made us all aware of the issue and demanded something be done. Jamie is right that government has to be seen to be supporting change, and Andrew is right in saying we all need to contribute. The bottom line is that food-related ill health costs the NHS over £6 billion each and every year, and today’s generation of children will be the first for over a century for whom life-expectancy falls. We not only need a paradigm shift, we need to make change happen from the bottom up and from the top down. Food Is Fun's approach is to energise the children, teachers and staff at grass-routes level to create a bottom-up demand and awareness for healthy food. And above all to show that healthy food can be easy, tasty and FUN!

The "Food Is Fun" Forum

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