Food Glorious Food

Terrible school dinners lie deep in the British psyche. They’re a national in-joke that helps shape our national identity. Regardless of age, race, class or religion anyone brought up in Britain can share reminiscences about lumpy custard, cold chips and horrible cauliflower cheese. Not for much longer however. With recent media attention, not to mention the constant badgering of Jamie Oliver, parents and even the government are increasingly aware of the importance of a healthy diet. The job isn’t done yet, there is still a way to go before all of Britain’s kids have the balanced diet that Oliver and others advocate. Still, it seems the school girls and boys of the future wont really have so much to complain about.

So what now? Where will we look for the next shared national whinge, something to help us bond with a younger generation who all eat their five-a-day? Well, for a start, how about the staff canteen? It’s a little less inclusive of course. The self employed are left out, as well as anyone who eats business lunches on an expense account. Still, most of us at one time or another have experienced the greasy horrors conjured up so affectionately by Victoria Wood’s sitcom Dinnerladies. Sadly, while Jamie is out there doing it for the kids, the food served up to Britain’s workforces have apparently failed to move with the times.

I have recently started work in a hospital and while I’m tempted by the overpriced treats in the café at reception, my pay slip reminds me, rather firmly, that I must stick to the canteen and its staff discount. Sadly, the food is neither healthy nor appealing. Stodgy pie, sausages that are both greasy and gristly and veg boiled beyond recognition. It recall’s nothing so much as those many lunch hours, queuing up with my dinner money. My school diet was, let me assure you, very much the unreconstructed pre-Oliver variety although I do recall one specialty, spaghetti dyed blue to appeal to children.

I may be just a lowly book shop assistant but I’m amazed at the rubbish that doctors and nurses are willing to put up with. Every day the media and the government are telling us that Britain is getting fatter. You don’t need to hear the statistics again, you know the stuff I mean, we are bombarded with it. By 2008 97% of us will be morbidly obese and the rest of us will be dead, that sort of thing. The NHS, we are told, will shoulder the burden, when all of us fatties queuing up with blocked arteries and weak hearts.

So with that in mind you would think medical professionals would be leading the way in healthy eating, setting a good example if you like. Instead, I see them day after day, lining up with me for the chips-with-everything fare at the canteen. Fair enough too probably, these are people who do difficult, tiring jobs, often on irregular shifts. They have more excuse than I do not to prepare a lunch at home. It’s just a pity the food available to them at work isn’t a bit more appetizing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the canteen staff. God forbid they should read this and start doing horrible things to my food. No doubt, and again, like those we’ve seen harassed on TV, they are doing the best they can with limited resources. The real problems are higher up, the people who hold the purse strings, who are more concerned with speed and efficiency than nutrition. The people who don’t care what their employees have to eat, as long as they can afford their pay rises.

Thinking about it now, hospitals are perhaps one of the few places where they can justify having other priorities. After all, as much as I bitch and moan, I’d feel a little guilty if I found out the NHS trust put off buying a dialysis machine for the sake of my dinners. Elsewhere, better meals would not just benefit the staff as individuals but the company as a whole. If feeding a child a nutritious lunch instead of junk food improves their concentration and learning potential, surely it would have similarly positive affect on your average adult.

If you’ve been reading carefully, you’ll have probably noticed that my desire for healthier lunches has been driven as much by my own desire for tasty food as by altruistic concerns for the British workforce but it does seem, all too often, that whatever suits my whims is also of benefit to the nation. The sooner somebody starts listening to me the better things will be for everybody.