Bad News

I mentioned Jamie Oliver's plan to de-fat American kids HERE, but I'm not dumb enough to dream the US would allow such a thing since it's very important that ConAgra or whothefuckever gets richer and richer off corn syrup, as well as the gub'ment telling kids what to eat is socialism (the only thing the gub'ment is to be trusted with are wars, which we're AWESOME at!) I'd make a snappy comment here about ConAgra getting federal subsidies which also reeks of being France, but I feel the need to move the fuck on.

But I did think England wouldn't have a problem with his program, which was getting great reviews. They seem a lot less baby-dick sensitive than us about such things, and their kids are getting fat too. But alas, they're saying fuck you to the Naked Chef too, and Matt Yglesias' minion wonders the fuck why:

The government cited a study showing that there was a dropoff in the number of students buying cafeteria food: “In 19 of the 27 schools, there was between a 9 per cent and 25 per cent drop in the number of pupils eating school meals.”

Is this necessarily bad news? I’m not sure that a world in which all children are eating unhealthy processed food is superior to a world in which three-quarters of children eat healthy food with the rest opting-out — and that is the study’s worst-case scenario. If government-sponsored social policy tries to nudge people’s behavior in a certain direction, then I suppose in a sense it will “tell people what to do” by definition. But if Lansley believes that the program literally tells people what to do by limiting choice, that is belied by the data that shows that some children are choosing not to participate. No one is being forced to do or eat anything.

No program is perfect, of course. But nutrition is extremely important to children’s health and educational attainment, and shortchanging investment in human capital in the name of cutting long-term deficits seems extremely counterproductive.