BRITISH CHILDREN TOO WELL FED AT HOME, SAYS DOCTOR

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 October 1950, Page 8

BRITISH CHILDREN TOO WELL FED AT HOME, SAYS DOCTOR

LONDON, October 2.—Dr Flrangcon Roberts, who has been finding out for the Health Ministry why Britain’s school children do not like school milk and leave so much of their school dinners, says that it is “all the fault of the mother who provides too much food at home because she thinks her children might feel hungry at school.”

He found that many girls refused milk because they were afraid of getting fat and that most country boys and girls would not drink it because they got too much milk at home. One boy scorned a 6d school dinner because there was no pheasant nor partridge on the menu. Half the children studying at one country secondary school took huge “Elevenses” —packets of cake, chocolate, and sandwiches.

Dr Roberts said that many boys began the day with a cup of tea in bed and then came down to a breakfast of cereals, bacon, egg, bread and butter. But just in case they should feel .gnawing pangs before dinner, their mother packed them off to school with a substantial snack for the morning break.

Two hours later the boys sat down to the school dinner—meat and two vegetables and pudding. After school came high tea dt home —pork pie, bread and butter, and salad. At bedtime, there was cocoa and bread and butter.

Dr Roberts concluded: “Many mothers seem to have a horror lest their children feel the slightest pangs of hunger even for brief moments of the day. At one school I found children congregated round the playground during the break, with tfie mothers feeding their offspring through the bars like animals in a' 2oo,”