Radio 4's Food Programme today was about School Meals and I wasn't too impressed.

I listened to Radio 4's Food Programme about School Meals today. You too could listen to it - on the BBC iPlayer - by visiting this BBC webpage. There was a strong congratulatory air about the programme which in my opinion was not well-merited. Certainly it is great that children are no longer being fed the ghastly, appallingly unhealthy pretend food of some years ago (before Jamie Oliver's providential intervention), namely Turkey Twizzlers. And certainly it was good to hear of a school where children were growing vegetables and salad foods and eating them in their school meals. - That's excellent. - And it's good that some children are learning and practising cooking.

But what I was shocked, appalled and very disappointed to hear was that while children are learning to cook poached eggs (good), they are also cooking BACON AND SAUSAGES, and serving them and BACON SANDWICHES for school breakfasts...)o: - Salt is much more harmful to children than to adults. This is NOT healthy eating.

Bacon and sausages in particular, and bread also, are very high in SALT/SODIUM, and it is SALTY FOOD that is the main cause of child obesity and the increasing incidence of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease in children. Children already eat too much salty stuff. Schools should be discouraging them from eating salty meals and salty snacks, and definitely not encouraging them to think of bacon and sausages as healthy breakfast food. - Just because it's cooked, doesn't mean it's healthy Bacon and sausages are part of the over-salted processed food perversion that is compromising people's health around the world.

See Children and Obesity

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and Sodium in foods