Pat Dollard | Young Americans

I know … That’s a picture of American kids … But they just looked sooo bad! Throwin’ down those gang signs … Shades n`at … The whole homie thang goin’ …
TimesOnline:

Students are operating a black-market trade in food banned in schools, including burgers and chocolate, in a backlash against healthier canteen menus such as those espoused by the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

Newly installed healthy menus in school canteens and the removal of junk food from vending machines have created a gap in the market that students have been quick to fill. Some of the most sophisticated operations are taking place at business and enterprise schools.

The move to healthier meals in schools was prompted by Oliver’s crusade in 2005 against Turkey Twizzlers and other unhealthy foods.

The following year the Government published a report setting definitive nutritional standards for school lunches.

One young smuggling mastermind, when finally caught, said to his school’s headmaster unapologetically: “But we were only doing what you taught us in business studies, Sir.”

After a tip from a head teacher at a Dorset secondary who broke up a “seriously big smuggling operation” run by a schoolboy, The Times has uncovered several similar contraband schemes. The head, who did not want to identify his school, was convinced that the switch to a healthy menu and the policy of keeping pupils on the premises at lunchtime had created an opening for entrepreneurs.

He became suspicious when he noticed two 14-year-old boys approaching the school weighed down with Lidl carrier bags.

“The thin wiry creatures, in full uniform but with shortened ties, shirts hanging out, were walking a heavily laden bicycle. The bags were dripping off the bike’s handlebars, crossbars and saddle like a scene from some desperate endeavour on foot and mule to reach a lost city in the Peruvian mountains,” he said.

A teacher nicknamed Columbo tracked down the boys and their illicit cargo: 60 cans of fizzy drinks and piles of milk chocolate.

“We discovered they were just the buyers. Someone else had funded the purchase, a player who in turn was funded by unknowns, who were taking the lion’s share.

“Getting to the core of the operation was like peeling an onion, there appeared to be no centre,” the head added.

He suspects that similar operations are happening to a greater or lesser extent in most schools.

Sure enough, when The Times appealed to head teachers for similar tales, the response was rapid and clear.

“It has happened to us. Kids with motorbikes buying McDonald’s burgers in bulk and flogging them in the playground. We are a business and enterprise school in Essex so I guess I should not be surprised,” one said. “When challenged, the boy at the centre said he was just being enterprising.”

Another, this time from Wales, said: “The ‘McDonald’s run’, where sixth-formers with cars take orders for the lower school who are locked in at lunchtimes is one of the best bits of student enterprise I have seen for a long time.”

It is not just business studies teachers who have been giving children ideas; it is also the parents. Two mothers from Rotherham gained publicity for feeding burgers to their children through the school railings after the introduction of a healthy new menu.

Brian Lightman, president of the Association of School and College Leaders and head teacher at St Cyres School in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, said that the healthy eating initiative would only succeed if students were allowed a say.

“Because these changes have been imposed without allowing time for them to gain a sense of ownership, schools are reporting cases of students finding innovative ways around the new regulations,” he said. Of course, if today’s teenager crisp smugglers really want a good excuse when caught, they might be well advised to point to Jamie Oliver himself. As an enterprising 11-year-old he used to lease school-lockers from fellow pupils, from where he would sell sweets he had bought at the cash-and-carry.

Alternatively, students could also point to the teachers who regularly sneak out at lunch time for burgers and chips, now that they are no longer on the menu.

On and off the menu

— At least two portions of fruit and veg per day, per child. One of these should be salad or vegetables and one fruit — fresh, tinned or a fruit salad

— A dairy food must be available

— A non-dairy source of protein — meat, fish, eggs, nuts, pulses and non-green beans — must be available daily. Red meat must be available at least twice a week in primaries and three times in secondaries. Fish must be on offer once a week in primaries and twice in secondaries. Oily fish has to be available at least once every three weeks

— A starchy food, either bread, pasta, noodles, rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, millet or cornmeal, must be available daily

— All drinks are prohibited except for skimmed or semi-skimmed milk, pure fruit juices, yoghurt and milk drinks with less than 5 per cent added sugar, combinations of the above, low-calorie hot chocolate, tea and coffee

— Manufactured meat products must meet legal minimum meat content levels. They must not be economy burgers

— No table salt

— No more than two deep-fried items per week

— No sweets, chocolate or savoury snacks, apart from nuts and seeds

— Pupils must have access to free, fresh drinking water at all times