After the Government announced a £280 million package to improve school dinners, following a visit to Downing Street by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, it begs the question ‘should junk food be banned from school dinners? Well obviously. As a report from the Department of Health in April revealed that more than a quarter of 2 to 10-year-olds in England are overweight and one in seven is obese. The proportion of under-11s considered overweight was 27.7% in 2003 – a rise of five points in eight years. Since 1995, the proportion of obese children aged between two and 10 has gone up from 9.9% to 13.7%. Levels of obesity were five percentage points higher among children living in the most deprived areas of the north east and London. As this evidence proves, children are getting more and more unhealthily over weight and even more so in places where money is an issue. So this proposed injection of money into school dinners will go some way to helping such issues. People have argued that if you ban junk food in schools the children will just go elsewhere and that the problem lies with the parents. This maybe the case but by improving the standards in school dinners we something is actually being done, which will send a message to parents and society as a whole.
