"though too many measures were excluded from its scope to be excessive" features an excessive use of 'excessive'.
I get that there's an obesity crisis, but it really feels like this one skipped the step where they checked if school meals were the problem, and jumped straight to a plan of "Make children miserable -> ??? -> profit". I appreciate your framing the larger problem of how we're ratchetting ourselves into ruin.
Not sure stopping kids eating crap so they don’t carry on into adulthood and inevitably have heart attacks which the nhs picks up the tab for is quite the hill to die on, but take your point more generally
They're not serving them 'crap' - there are perfectly good standards in place. The new guidance is taking aim at very normal foods - ham, sausages, cheese, fruit juice, crumble - which most parents would consider form part of a normal healthy diet for kids - in favour of imposing a very narrow, health food fanatic's version of healthy.
This is the problem: all campaigners have to do is whisper the words 'healthier' or 'safer' and people don't stop to ask the question, 'But was it healthy/safe enough already?'
The ‘very normal’ foods you list are all processed rubbish that’s bad for you! Eat that stuff at home if you must, but society has a responsibility to look after kids properly. Serving processed rubbish isn’t that
"food standards campaigners describe CHEESE and FRUIT JUICE as 'processed rubbish'" sounds like a mean-spirited right-wing tabloid attack, and yet here we are. Just seems to be a real problem of no shared universe at all here.
Fruit juice served to kids is full of artificial sugar and god knows what. Cheese - my god, I love cheese, it’s amazing - is full of fat and kids will guzzle the stuff if you let them. I’ve no issue with kids having either, because life is ultimately for living - but they shouldn’t form part of a regular school diet.
This seems to me to be the steelman of the inchoate but valid complaints about the ‘deep state’, the ‘blob’ etc. which are really about a culture rather than about individual bad things. And Ovendon’s point is important: it’s not a secret conspiracy, it’s about the effect of everybody behaving quite openly as the school foods standards people do.
I joined the Libertarian Party a couple of weeks ago. The thing that tipped me over the edge was Nigel Farage saying that "the puritanical spirit of Oliver Cromwell again stalks the land. Our bossy, ruling elite’s default response to something is moving to ban it." . . .
. . . a few days after having called for a ban on Muslims playing in public: "We wouldn’t want to stop individuals praying but mass prayer is banned in many Muslim countries in the Middle East itself. So, yes, we have to stop this kind of mass demonstration, provocative demonstration, in historic British sites."
I wouldn't describe myself as a 100% Ayn Rand reading American style libertarian, but I'm heading that way. Perhaps I'm a "state capacity libertarian"; scrap the legislation that is making us waste money on bat tunnels and fish discos so we can spend the money on fixing potholes, building reservoirs, running municipal tips etc.
QUOTE> "I have on occasion suggested that we should simply repeal every law and regulation passed since the mid-90s, with only a small grace period allowed to identify those we wished to keep. In reality this probably would not work - even if we could find a politician bold enough to do it. Other whimsical ideas, such as every law ceasing within 10 years unless an MP can be found to read it out, in full, in the Chamber, similarly belong more within the pages of a Heinlein novel than in real life."
These both sound like good ideas to me!
Honestly, I increasingly feel like I'm living in some kind of dystopia (Idiocracy, perhaps). My only optimistic take is that I do think a lot of the UK's problems could be fixed if there was the political will to do so.
About milk in schools. I work in a primary school, we throw away a huge amount of semi-skimmed "free school milk" every week, and it seems such a waste. I expect if it was whole milk - which is tastier - and came with plastic straws - which have a more pleasant "mouth feel" - instead of paper straws, we would throw away a lot less.
Interesting point on the milk! I wonder how many more kids will start start taking pack lunches / chucking the school dinner and eating junk food once lentil stew replaces bangers and mash?
I'd be curious how you felt about France's school food which is clearly very bureaucracy-controlled but connected to a genuine food culture. Though I'm worried all the annoying usual suspects are *too* enthusiastic about it and there might be problems on deeper scrutiny.
Interesting question! You're right I'm more innately sympathetic to the 'preserving authentic French culture' argument, particularly if part of a broader approach on markets etc. which I understand the French do.
I think it would be down to the specifics and, crucially, what French parents actually do. My core objection here is that it takes aim at very normal foods - ham, sausages, cheese, fruit juice, crumble - which most parents would consider form part of a normal healthy diet for kids - to impose a diet dreamed up by health food fanatics. If French parents genuinely feed their kids boursin and brie multiple times a week, and have much higher standards for what they serve at home (which feels possible? But I have no idea), then I'm good with their school food standards trying to preserve it; if it's just a French bureaucrat's manufactured idea of 'French culture' then much less so.
I so agree with the depression and sadness I am feeling reading these plans. We are endlessly being told that mental ill-health (btw, why are reporters now describing mental ill-health as mental health???) has increased since COVID massively amongst the young. Where is joy, warmth, taste as in taste buds, in these regulations? And it seems to me, children en masse would not eat such meals because they are so unappealing.
"though too many measures were excluded from its scope to be excessive" features an excessive use of 'excessive'.
I get that there's an obesity crisis, but it really feels like this one skipped the step where they checked if school meals were the problem, and jumped straight to a plan of "Make children miserable -> ??? -> profit". I appreciate your framing the larger problem of how we're ratchetting ourselves into ruin.
Thank you on both counts, typo corrected.
Not sure stopping kids eating crap so they don’t carry on into adulthood and inevitably have heart attacks which the nhs picks up the tab for is quite the hill to die on, but take your point more generally
They're not serving them 'crap' - there are perfectly good standards in place. The new guidance is taking aim at very normal foods - ham, sausages, cheese, fruit juice, crumble - which most parents would consider form part of a normal healthy diet for kids - in favour of imposing a very narrow, health food fanatic's version of healthy.
This is the problem: all campaigners have to do is whisper the words 'healthier' or 'safer' and people don't stop to ask the question, 'But was it healthy/safe enough already?'
The ‘very normal’ foods you list are all processed rubbish that’s bad for you! Eat that stuff at home if you must, but society has a responsibility to look after kids properly. Serving processed rubbish isn’t that
"food standards campaigners describe CHEESE and FRUIT JUICE as 'processed rubbish'" sounds like a mean-spirited right-wing tabloid attack, and yet here we are. Just seems to be a real problem of no shared universe at all here.
Fruit juice served to kids is full of artificial sugar and god knows what. Cheese - my god, I love cheese, it’s amazing - is full of fat and kids will guzzle the stuff if you let them. I’ve no issue with kids having either, because life is ultimately for living - but they shouldn’t form part of a regular school diet.
This seems to me to be the steelman of the inchoate but valid complaints about the ‘deep state’, the ‘blob’ etc. which are really about a culture rather than about individual bad things. And Ovendon’s point is important: it’s not a secret conspiracy, it’s about the effect of everybody behaving quite openly as the school foods standards people do.
Hear Hear! 👏
I joined the Libertarian Party a couple of weeks ago. The thing that tipped me over the edge was Nigel Farage saying that "the puritanical spirit of Oliver Cromwell again stalks the land. Our bossy, ruling elite’s default response to something is moving to ban it." . . .
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/23/reform-will-repeal-the-generational-smoking-ban/
. . . a few days after having called for a ban on Muslims playing in public: "We wouldn’t want to stop individuals praying but mass prayer is banned in many Muslim countries in the Middle East itself. So, yes, we have to stop this kind of mass demonstration, provocative demonstration, in historic British sites."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/19/nigel-farage-condemned-over-call-to-ban-public-prayer-for-muslims-in-the-uk
I wouldn't describe myself as a 100% Ayn Rand reading American style libertarian, but I'm heading that way. Perhaps I'm a "state capacity libertarian"; scrap the legislation that is making us waste money on bat tunnels and fish discos so we can spend the money on fixing potholes, building reservoirs, running municipal tips etc.
QUOTE> "I have on occasion suggested that we should simply repeal every law and regulation passed since the mid-90s, with only a small grace period allowed to identify those we wished to keep. In reality this probably would not work - even if we could find a politician bold enough to do it. Other whimsical ideas, such as every law ceasing within 10 years unless an MP can be found to read it out, in full, in the Chamber, similarly belong more within the pages of a Heinlein novel than in real life."
These both sound like good ideas to me!
Honestly, I increasingly feel like I'm living in some kind of dystopia (Idiocracy, perhaps). My only optimistic take is that I do think a lot of the UK's problems could be fixed if there was the political will to do so.
About milk in schools. I work in a primary school, we throw away a huge amount of semi-skimmed "free school milk" every week, and it seems such a waste. I expect if it was whole milk - which is tastier - and came with plastic straws - which have a more pleasant "mouth feel" - instead of paper straws, we would throw away a lot less.
Interesting point on the milk! I wonder how many more kids will start start taking pack lunches / chucking the school dinner and eating junk food once lentil stew replaces bangers and mash?
I'd be curious how you felt about France's school food which is clearly very bureaucracy-controlled but connected to a genuine food culture. Though I'm worried all the annoying usual suspects are *too* enthusiastic about it and there might be problems on deeper scrutiny.
Interesting question! You're right I'm more innately sympathetic to the 'preserving authentic French culture' argument, particularly if part of a broader approach on markets etc. which I understand the French do.
I think it would be down to the specifics and, crucially, what French parents actually do. My core objection here is that it takes aim at very normal foods - ham, sausages, cheese, fruit juice, crumble - which most parents would consider form part of a normal healthy diet for kids - to impose a diet dreamed up by health food fanatics. If French parents genuinely feed their kids boursin and brie multiple times a week, and have much higher standards for what they serve at home (which feels possible? But I have no idea), then I'm good with their school food standards trying to preserve it; if it's just a French bureaucrat's manufactured idea of 'French culture' then much less so.
I so agree with the depression and sadness I am feeling reading these plans. We are endlessly being told that mental ill-health (btw, why are reporters now describing mental ill-health as mental health???) has increased since COVID massively amongst the young. Where is joy, warmth, taste as in taste buds, in these regulations? And it seems to me, children en masse would not eat such meals because they are so unappealing.