Diet, Public Health and the Hospitality Industry - Essay Example

Diet, Public Health and the Hospitality Industry Introduction Healthy eating has become an important concern of the U.K. government as obesity has become a persistent problem of the economy. It has been estimated that the percentage of obese men have increased from 3.2 % to 24.4% and the percentage of obese women have increased from 16.4% to 25.1%. At the current rate of growth it can be expected that by 2050, 70% of girls and 55% of the boys will be obese (Lifestyles statistics team, 2014). These figures have particularly raised the concern of the U.K. government and it is trying to promote healthier eating habits among consumers. The government is trying to convince the hospitality sector to promote healthy eating habits. This essay will focus on critical analysis of the measures taken by the government in the school meal sector. The current problem of the school meal programs and the corrective actions taken by the government are the focus of the study. Jamie Oliver’s attempt to improve the standard of school meals provides a starting point for the study and then it integrates the current measures taken by the government to deal with the problems of obesity in schools by promoting healthy eating habits. Discussion School meals had been introduced in the U.K. in the 19th century and ever since then it has been extensively debated regarding the poor nutrition content of the food. Nutrition of child and healthy physical development is an important criterion for the overall development. The aspect of child development and nutrition has significantly deteriorated in the past decade and the U.K. is no exception to this rule (Glewwe, Jacoby and King, 2001). The research conducted by Armstrong, et al. (2006) has shown that unhealthy meal not only results in poor health conditions like obesity and diabetes, but also affects the cognitive development of a child in an adverse manner. In the U.K., school meals are a major form of policy intervention that is practiced by the government to bring down the gap of nutrient contents of students from different socio-economic backgrounds (Burke, 2002). Though there has been an increase in terms of the choice that is available to the children and a significant reduction in the price of the school meals; this has been accompanied with increase in weight related problems (Figlio and Winicki, 2005). For instance, the research conducted by Schanzenbach (2005) depicts that there was a positive correlation of children between the age of 2-10 who had participated in the school meals and an increase in their body weight. This problem was not found for students who had brought meals from home implying that school meals was a factor causing obesity. Morgan and Sonnino (2007) have shown that the efforts taken by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in an attempt to improve the poor quality meals that were being served at the schools were commendable. The program was victorious in the sense that the Council of Greenwich had made all the schools to shift towards the new menus prescribed by Oliver in 2004-05. Initially the children had not accepted the idea of healthy eating and continued to eat the unhealthy food. The program was definitely an elaborate one that required concerted effort in terms of training of the employees cooking the food, raising awareness among children and greater investment on the part of the schools to improve their overall infrastructure. However, the program had slowly gained acceptance as government had introduced it in greater number of schools. The government is continuing with its effort to improve school meals ever since the introduction of Oliver’s method of meal preparation (Belot and James, 2011). Supporting the view of Belot and James (2011) another research exploring school meals was conducted by Tolfrey (2011). He stated that the program introduced by Mr. Oliver has greatly transformed the eating habits in the school and the U.K. has made considerable progress in the last seven years. The government had initially not taken this issue seriously and had not channelized sufficient funds into healthy eating (Tolfrey, 2011). However, Oliver’s effort made the government to invest more money. The government has come up with the free school meal program which aims at providing healthy meals to the students to ensure that balanced food can be obtained by all. These programs are often faced with number of challenges which prevents them from being fully acceptable. For instance, some parents consider it as a stigma to enrol their children into these programs while others may find the process highly cumbersome (Department for Education, 2014). In order to remove the challenges that are being faced by schools, the government has also introduced an online version of the Free School Meals project in 2009 to improve the process of service delivery channels in schools. Similarly, the DFE Free School Meals, another project to ensure healthy eating habits among children has been launched on a pilot basis (Department for Education, 2014). Free Universal meals were provided under this scheme to make healthy eating popular. It can be expected that the actions taken by the government are likely to work only when there is a convergence in the ideas promoted by different healthy eating organizations. It has been found that the Jamie Oliver’s campaign have somehow increased negative perceptions among guardians regarding the quality of food that is provided in schools and this causes parents to prevent their children from taking part in the free meal programs. Children’s food trust is a charitable program that has been undertaken with the aim of promoting healthy eating habits among children. Recently the organization has come up with a new food plan where it recommends that every school meal should be based on nutrient based standards and this criterion must be made legally binding. Presently, there are 2500 schools in the U.K. and these standards are not legally binding, which means that close to a million pupils are subjected to unhealthy food (Children’s Food Campaign, 2013). A joint collaboration was set up between the Student’s food campaign and the Jamie Oliver foundation to improve the food quality for students. There is a persistent effort to reduce the industrial trans-fat that is being currently used in the food which has a strong correlation with the obesity among children. A similar finding was also observed by Babbs (2002) who had analyzed the effectiveness of school food campaign. The Student’s food campaign also suggests that there should be an attempt to improve the monitoring efforts to ensure that healthier eating standards are maintained effectively by all schools (Babbs, 2012). The problem of subsequent deterioration of food quality over the first half of the past decade in the U.K. could be largely attributed to the attitude of the consumers. A considerable light has been shed in this regard in the works of Gustafsson (2002) who had found that children or their parents are not included in majority of the decisions regarding school food standards. A similar finding has also been made by other researchers who had shown that majority of parents had no idea regarding the fact that packed lunches provided by them contained food that had considerably higher levels of saturated fat, compared to the food that was being catered in the schools (Bhattacharya, Currie, and Haider, 2006). Based on this fact, a logical argument follows that raising the awareness of parents and educating children to make informed choice regarding quality of food should be on the priority list of school boards. Revised standard for school menu is likely to become effective from 1st January 2015 (Department for Education, 2014). The required nutrients by the students and the factor of obesity have been taken into account to address the issue of overweight children. Most of the government reforms in the school meals sector focus on providing lower-calorie rich diets to the children which can positively influence their body masses and reduce the instance of obesity in them. The government is trying to raise the standard of food that is being offered by the school by mainly focusing on the requirements in lunch and breakfasts. These programs are directly targeting to reduce the processed food intake of the students and increase the quotient of vegetables and fruits in their diet. The government is promoting these healthy habits not only among academia but also among free schools (Department for Education, 2014). The success of the programs taken by the schools will also depend on the role that is assumed by the governing boards in the school that takes care of the nutritional and monitoring standards. Governing bodies in the schools have the duty to promote the whole school approach that has become a driving force, shaping the food regulation practices. The governing bodies can implement healthy eating courses in the curriculum and integrate the food planning policy of the school in the overall long-term developmental goals (National Governor’s Association, 2007). Furthermore, the governing boards are also in the best position to monitor the activity of the caterers and force them to serve only healthy foods. Conclusion To conclude, the U.K. government’s effort to control healthy eating can be considered as a direct policy intervention to improve not only the health standard of the country but also academic performance of students. The present efforts though commendable can be described as fragmented at best. The government has been trying to improve food and nutrition based standards in schools mainly by reducing the quotient of fatty food in the menu. However, social stigma regarding the quality of the food and the confusion regarding the provision of free meals needs to be addressed to enhance the robustness of the system. The training and development programs of the kitchen staff needs to be improved and monitoring of the school meals is also mandatory to enhance the effectiveness of the programs. 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