Chapter 4 skinny

 

 

 

 CHAPTER 4

Chapter 4 Contents

IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH EDUCATION

4.1      HEALTH   EDUCATION  AND  FOOD

4.1.1  Health Education Philosophy and Food Education: Catch 'em Young

4.1.1.1    Health education is "as yet unrefined and far too vague”

According to Cantle, health education is "as yet unrefined and far too vague to
be the basis for educational activity in schools." He goes on to remark:

"To develop courses in health education without attention
to important philosophical questions that should be asked of it is
both potentially wasteful of scarce resources and likely to
damage rather than improve a school's curriculum. One cannot
or rather should not proceed with any practical activity without a
full understanding of how the aims pursued are logically related
to alternative aims. In the case of health education this logical
analysis remains to be done and is a problem not resolved by
exact definition of terms, as some writers would claim.”

(Cantle,
1980: 28)

4.1.1.2     Do we aim to tell people what to eat?

Williams and Farley (1980: 33) consider “... the wider aims of health education
(when) we talk in terms of helping people to make their own decisions, of increasing
autonomy, of fostering self-esteem, of developing good health practice. Achieving
these aims demands a process in the course of which behaviour, concepts, attitudes and
values are explored and may be modified in the light of information.” The wider aims
of food education are entirely commensurate with those identified by Williams and
Farley. Hall (1984: 74) asks "Do we aim to tell people what to eat or do we hope to
educate people in how to choose for themselves what to eat?"

An important underlying philosophy of food education is that the foundation of
good parenthood in terms of correct dietary practices within the family are laid down
in the school. But further to dietary practices the requirement is for parents to
understand the wider social issues relating to food and eating.

4.1.1.3    When did you last eat together as a family?

Izbicki (1982:10) asks the question "What on earth has gone wrong with
children...?" at the start of an analysis of some reasons for the February, 1982
'disturbances' at St. Saviours Primary School at Toxteth. The young pupils, it will be
remembered, went beserk and wrecked the school. While his discussion concerns
discipline in the school he points out that there are important roles and duties for
parents to fulfil and perform but they are increasingly avoiding them. In the context of
the stabilising influence of the table his other important question to parents is "When
did you last eat together as a family?" He asserts that the latest form of deprivation is
no longer the lack of books in the home. "It now is that families no longer eat
together. And that includes the better-off families in suburbia and green belt houses."

On page 45 LINK we were talking about eating meals in front of the TV and, no doubt,
conversation is limited anyway to natural breaks in the programme. There can be no
'pass the butter, please' as everyone is self-contained. But that assumes there's more
than one person at the 'meal' and no guarantees can be offered.

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4.1.1.4     Today’s school food lacking nourishment might be the cause of behaviour problems

Not so long ago in the secondary school it was the practice to serve the lunch en
famille to tables of eight to ten pupils, where, in the more enlightened schools, an
older prefect was almost a surrogate parent. Changing meal-patterns in the home may
be the cause of change in the school but there are other influences which include the
labour cost of presenting the meal in this way, decreasing amounts of time and space
in which to pursue the eating activity and an increasing demand for more choice of
different kinds of what is increasingly being called 'fast food'.

"Junk food" is Izbicki's term for it, however, and raises a further interesting
point. If the food consumed today lacks certain levels of nourishment it may be a
contributory cause of the present-day behaviour problems. "I should not be surprised if
many of the children involved in that orgy of aggression existed on a diet of junk
food, if that, and the odd packets of crisps and chewing gum. Proteins are no doubt
kept to a bare minimum." Yellowlees (1981) expresses similar concern with the
query: "Whether increasing urban violence and vandalism is due to a cage-like
existence in tower blocks and in endless depressing streets, or to our appalling food I
don't know."

4.1.1.5    Protection of a child against … malnutrition is … just as
important as protection against ignorance.

The following quotation is relevant although it is more concerned with the
provision of education than the provision of food.

"The case of food is interesting. Protection of a child
against starvation or malnutrition is presumably just as
important as protection against ignorance. It is difficult to
envisage, however, that any government, in its anxiety to see
that children have minimum standards of food and clothing,
would pass laws for compulsory and universal eating, or that it
should entertain measures which lead to increased taxes and
rates in order to provide children's food 'free' at local authority
kitchens or shops. It is still more difficult to imagine that most
people would unquestioningly accept this system, especially
where it had developed to the stage that for 'administrative
reasons' parents were allocated those shops which happened to
be nearest their homes; or that any complaint or special desire to
change their pre-selected shops should be dealt with by special
and quasi-judicial enquiry after a formal appointment with the
local 'Child Food Officer’ or, failing this, by pressure upon their
respective representatives on the local 'Child Food Committee'
or upon their local M.P. Yet strange as such hypothetical
measures may appear when applied to the provision of food and
clothing, they are nevertheless typical of English state education
as it has evolved by historical accident or administrative
expediency.

4.1.1.6    The abolition of compulsory school meals provision

“Presumably it is recognised that the ability in a free market
to change one's food shop when it threatens to become, or has
become, inefficient is an effective instrument whereby parents
can protect their children from inferior service in a prompt and
effective manner. If this is so, then one should expect that the
same arguments of protection would in this respect point in the
direction not of a state school system where it is normally
difficult to change one's 'supplier' but in the direction of a free
market where it is not.” (West, 1965: 14)

The protection mentioned came in the compulsory provision of school meals.
Society is deemed to have progressed so far as to make such compulsion unnecessary
– at least the Government thinks so witnessed by the abolition of compulsory school
meals provision. Other forms of protection 'come to light' when a child dies of
starvation or other food-related abuse.

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4.1.1.7    Parents’ responsibility for the correct food education of their own children

But food is not education and the analogy is weak when one considers the wider
dimensions of education. This brings us to the point that today's generation should be
educated into making wise food decisions and shouldering the responsibility for the
correct food education of their own children. (As I expounded in "Delegated Food
Education": 1983c.) 

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Educational+catering%27s+failure+to+cater+for+health+education&author=Harrison%2C+A.F.&publication_year=1983

It is the right kind of material for a group of nutritionists to use in a 'brain-
storming' session where all ideas are identified and evaluated.

4.1.2    Social Nutrition

4.1.2.1    Gastro-geography  

One attack on the problem concerned 'social nutrition'. MacKenzie (1980) and
reported in 'Home Economics’ (Jan 1981: 14) defined it as "the study of the social,
psychological and economic factors that determine food habits and of the means by
which future choice may be influenced in the interests of better nutrition." He pointed
out that people tend to ignore facts and advice, "just as people did not stop smoking
when they were aware of the associations with lung cancer, so equally they did not
modify their behaviour in food purchase and consumption in order to achieve an
optimum diet." An alternative interpretation of "social nutrition" is provided by Neill
(1979: 23) who comments that "A whole host of factors operate in the area of 'social
nutrition’ which is the aspect of food acceptability which decides that in Great Britain
it is common to eat wheat, bread and butter... while in Ghana it is 'accepted' to eat
cassava, yam..". While Denis-Jones (1972) would prefer to call this effect "Gastro-
geography” Neill elaborates in terms of cultural restrictions, taboos, prestige,
psychological factors, environmental considerations and the economics of food. These
ideas are relevant to the geographical issues in Chapter 2.

[See current use of gastrogeography

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=gastrogeography ]

 

4.1.2.2    The vast problem of improving the dietary habits of a nation

Lennon and Fieldhouse (1982) devote 114 pages to "Social Nutrition". The back
cover relates that it "...aims to provide an insight into the many and diverse factors –
from economic to psycho-social – involved in the formation of food habits, as well as
showing that nutrition attitudes are influenced by numerous agencies including the
media, health visitors, nurses, doctors, teachers, food manufacturers and our own
families." While I am not here to review books it is very useful to those whose interest
in such topics is more than superficial. The problem with reviews is that they want to
say that book A is better or worse than book B and like to omit that as many
approaches as possible should be made on the vast problem of improving the dietary
habits of a nation. The Lennon and Fieldhouse summary may have served to describe
the present oeuvre in part and the reader can make up his own mind as to the truth
in that claim.

4.1.3  "Everybody's Concern but Nobody's Responsibility"

4.1.3.1    We cannot dismantle the school meals service

It is obvious that no one person or agency has responsibility for food education
any more than that a locus of responsibility for health education exists. There is a
network of interest, activity and responsibility for specific dimensions of health
education according to the agency concerned. One problem arising from a break-down
in the efficiency of the network is deciding which component is at fault. If there is a
case of mass food poisoning its cause may be attributable to a specific event located in
a specific organisation with reasonably clear rules concerning the control and blame.
If, in the unlikely event today, there were several cases of rickets occurring in a junior
school, those with some responsibility may include parents, the headmaster, the
school GP, other GPs in the area, the school

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