What Do You Eat?

I'm sat in a cover lesson. It's not me covering, it's just my unfortunate luck that they've stolen my classroom.The lesson is some sort of strange blend of 'catering studies' and 'PE theory' and students are being asked to come up with a weeks worth of diet for an athlete. The students seem to barely know what an athlete is, let alone what they might eat. They are asked to explain how it might be different from what they eat and at this point the true horror becomes as evident as the white smoke from the top of the Vatican (although I should remind you that there are similes about other sights of major religious interest available.)

I should deviate here for a second. Where I work is not inner-city, but is brutally suburban and annexed to a town that is best described as vile in the extreme. On my way home I walked passed a chipshop that advertises a lunchtime special. This special contains not fish but Chips. Curry Sauce and an Energy Drink. I wonder on whether they could genuinely be prosecuted for criminal negligence. I have no problem with a chippy. I myself stop there for chips occasionally. I also do a great deal of sport and eat healthily the rest of the time.

Unlike Ophelia. (other pseudonyms from literary works that are vastly different to the real names of the children are available)

Ophelia, when asked what she ate for breakfast yesterday said
'Nothing.'
Lunch?
'Nothing'
Dinner?
'McDonalds Chips and Two pieces of KFC chicken.

Now that, is absurd. The horror, of course is this. It doesn't matter how healthy the food is in schools. It doesn't matter that this girl is on free school meals. It matters that fast food is so pervasive and insipid that they will just buy rubbish regardless.

On my school trip on Friday one of the museums had had a plumbing issue and its toilets had failed, meaning that we had to take a few students to the nearest available public toilet to save them from the sort of coach-borne incident that would open them to a lifetime of bullying. The nearest public amenity was a McDonalds. They were specifically told not to buy food. By the time they returned to the coach they had, between 8 of them, 6 big-macs, 4 quarter pounders, 6 packets of chips (large) and two strawberry milkshakes.

The little bastards.