By James Milnes Gaskell
When one delivers a message one can never be sure how far others have understood it.
I have been writing about nutrition and school meals for several years. The message is simple. Improve school meals and you will have better health, social, behaviour and performance outcomes. Even this simple message can be distorted by those who do not want to hear. We have Mark Brantley saying, “Gaskell come to save us from starvation. What a thing!” This is to miss the point. Today’s diet focuses too much on processed foods which do not contain adequate quantities of the required nutrients. It is a modern kind of malnutrition which we have to fight, not starvation. Others support this message. At the recent Fruit Festival we have Minister Hector saying, “The event is a time when we focus on nutrition…as the healthier a nation is the more productive it is.” And Dr. Daly saying, “Nevisians by far eat too little fruit. They tend to eat more processed foods than anything else, so we are here to promote the eating of healthy fruits…We are hoping that persons will listen and ward off diseases that have come among us in the last decade or two because we have strayed away from what works which is healthy eating and healthy living.”
Clearly Brantley and the CCM opposition, which did not even mention school meals in their election manifesto, are, for the time being, a lost cause so far as support for an improvement in the nutrition of school children goes. But what of the Administration; how far do they go? Are they just interested in making good on their promise of school meals in every primary school, perhaps heedless of quality? Or do they take the matter as far as I and my colleagues Hastings Daniel and Mark Roberts would like?
We have been telling the Administration that what we think necessary is a revolution in the food culture of Nevis, and that improved school meals forms just a part of it. The school years are the years outstanding in the whole human life cycle when Governments have a once in a lifetime, never to be repeated, opportunity to feed their population, to influence eating habits and to teach the importance of good food for good health. To do this there has to be a well thought out multistage plan properly executed. The stages could be:
1. Construction or improvement of kitchens for the seven primary schools;
2. Selection of and training of cooks;
3. The same as 1 and 2 above for the secondary schools;
4. Availability of breakfasts from the school kitchens;
5. Cooking lessons in schools;
6. Better connection with the land. I am to give a 3½-acre plot to the Agricultural Department for the growing of vegetables and fruit and production of small stock for school meals and to involve children in the origin of that which they eat, through planting and cultivating same;
7. Refresher courses for cooks; and
8. Competitions, prizes etc. for best school meals.
The Premier has talked about the more nutritious lunches available or soon to be so at the primary schools. What we are anxious about is the means of ensuring that his words translate into reality. Cooking for 100-plus children is entirely different to cooking at home where mum is the dominant figure, or in a restaurant where adults order from a menu. If the school cooks are to be 100% effective they need support and instructions.
I had heard that Earline Maynard, the ex-Principal at the St. Thomas Primary School, was to be appointed into a school meals supervisory capacity. This would be ideal, since she is an excellent leader, who has been in charge of the successful St. Thomas’ School lunch improvement programme. I now hear a rumour that the Ministry may not after all be making any appointment of such a supervisor.
This would be a serious mistake. What is happening at two schools is not as encouraging as it should be. The cook at the Ivor Walters told me that she could not afford plantains or sweet potatoes, but sometimes she would produce white potatoes and add sugar. White sugar is bare calories and contains no minerals or vitamins. Do not blame the cook. She needs supervisory instructions.
At the St. John’s School, where the cooks to the new kitchen started out with the improved buying system and new menus, we find that in one or two matters of nutrition, standards have slipped. “We used to get fish but the children don’t like fish”, a cook said. The answer to that is to try different ways of cooking it. Children usually like fish cakes. “They don’t like the ground beef from the abattoir, so we’ve had to give them chicken franks from Rams”, declare the cooks. White bread and chicken franks are what in the improved programme we are trying to get away from.
Again don’t blame the cooks. Needed is a strong respected supervisor who will persuade and oblige the children to like that which is well cooked, palatable and nutritious. Children so often follow one of their peers. If he/she volubly says a particular dish is not nice then all of them dislike it.
But permitting the children to decide what meals they will have undermines the improvement programme. We do not allow them to opt out of, for instance, mathematics. They are not in a position to say what food is nutritious, or what lessons they should be taught.
The supervisor would be the business manager of the project. She would mastermind the acceptance of more nutritious school meals by the community. She would support the cooks in their purchasing, use of new recipes, production of inventories of equipment and checking of same, and in hygiene and food safety. She would organise cooking refresher courses, seek donations to build up a cook book library. She would check the financial side of each school’s purchasing and establish a range of items which should be purchased, and those which should not. She would need authority and a budget. Without a business manager, and the several school kitchens left to be run by cooks without the support and guidance of that manager, the project will fail to advance nutritional standards.
I am hopeful that the rumour is incorrect and that I shall find Earline Maynard supervising the School Lunch Programme, because I know that her enthusiasm for it and capacity to think how to make changes and inspire people to give of their best will make it a success and allow me (and my two colleagues) to continue to play a part. So far, what we have done is to establish a purchasing system and new menus for two schools, and we have funded, ourselves and through donations, the purchase of commercial grade kitchen equipment for those two schools. About two months ago, we provided the Ministry with a floor plan for a suggested kitchen for the Charlestown Primary School. We hope that this plan has been adopted by the Ministry and that their architects have developed working drawings.
If an entrepreneur set up a small chain of restaurants and he left the business management to the cooks, he would find that standards which he might have hoped for would slip, more in one restaurant than another. But inevitably, with no overall control, the business would be run for the benefit of the staff until such time as there were insufficient customers to call it a business any more.
So, I really hope the rumour is unfounded. I and my colleagues would find it difficult to approach potential donors for equipment for another school kitchen if it appeared that there was no overall control of the use to which equipment would be put. How is the programme going donors will ask? We need to be able to respond truthfully and enthusiastically. We would not be willing to give of our time, money and effort in order to shore up a failing project.
Politicians like to point to newly built roads. That is something whose benefit is there for all to see. Improved nutrition for the nation is far more important but it is less of an easily visible achievement than a road or a building. However, for this NRP Administration, which prides itself on being ‘a people party’, there would be no greater gift that it could give its people than a solid basis for good health.
