Bilfinger Berger Magazine 1/2008

EDUCATION AUTHORITIES IN BRITAIN HAVE DECLARED WAR ON THE CHIP BUTTY CULTURE. TOO MANY YOUNGSTERS ARE TOO FAT. TO COMBAT THE TREND, HARLINGTON UPPER SCHOOL IN BEDFORDSHIRE IS WORKING ON A NEW APPROACH TO SCHOOL LUNCHES

Elise Robinson is 14 years old and Chair of the School Council. A pupil at Harlington Upper School north of London, she represents the interests of 1,300 students between the ages of 13 and 18. “School lunches used to be like feeding time at the zoo,” says Elise. More and more kids wanted to take part in the program and when the bell went, they poured into the cafeteria in hoards. Students jostled the drinks vending machines, the young ones pushed out of the way by their elders. It was mayhem. “Sometimes the queue was so long, we just walked away.”

TOO MUCH FAT, SALT AND SUGAR
The student representatives appealed to Shawn Fell, the Head Teacher at Harlington Upper, and Shane Bagby, who manages the school for Bilfinger Berger Project Investments, and found willing ears: A project group was set up and students were invited to submit competitive suggestions: “How can we improve lunch? How can we redesign the cafeteria?” Shane Bagby offered an iPod as a prize for the best idea. Elise, as Chair of the School Council, listened to what her fellow students had to say during break times. Not only were they unhappy with the crush at the counters, they also wanted a say in the choice of food and the prices.

With school meals becoming the subject of debate across the country, the time was ripe. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in his TV show “Jamie’s School Dinners” had lifted the lid on what was being served up in school canteens: cheap food with too much fat, too much salt and too much sugar. In 2005 the TV chef delivered a petition with 270,000 signatures calling for better school meals to Prime Minister Tony Blair, who supported the demand. As did Prince Charles. The fact was, according to a study by the Department of Health, one child in four was overweight; one in seven was classified as clinically obese.

FED UP WITH JUNK FOOD
“There were times when the day began with pizza and twizzlers,” recalls Karen Chamberlain who manages the catering at Harlington School and the nearby Samuel Whitbread College for Bilfinger Berger Project Investments. Karen has been cooking school meals for 16 years. “I have seen a variety of trends,” she explains: first traditional hot dinners, then the fast food wave that swept in with the 1980s, and finally, in recent years, an awareness of more healthy eating. By the time Jamie Oliver launched his initiative in 2005, Karen Chamberlain was miles ahead. Step-bystep, she had taken fattening foods off the menu and replaced them with healthy alternatives: “A lot of the youngsters were fed up with burgers and chips!” She welcomes the obligatory standards for school meals introduced nationwide in 2007 as a result of the TV chef’s campaign: cakes and biscuits are available only as a dessert to accompany a main meal. Burgers and sausages are served no more than once a fortnight, and fried food is on the menu twice a week, at most. The vending machines dispensing sweets and fizzy drinks are gone, and the giant bottles of ketchup, once common on the tables, have been removed.

Healthy eating at British schools doesn’t necessarily mean nut cutlets and tofu. It means cutting down on particular ingredients such as sugar, salt and fat, and serving hot meals, as well as sandwiches. Karen Chamberlain has plenty of tricks up her sleeve to make healthy food appetizing to her students. She knows that hardly a child in the school will choose an apple on its own. So instead she serves bowls of fruit salad and grapes: “Now they just dig in!”The pupils also have a hand in choosing what’s on the menu. When Karen made the decision to source meat products exclusively from local farms, the students took part in a tasting session to select the sausages they liked best.

FROM CANTEEN TO ART-HOUSE CAFETERIA
Twelve o’clock, lunchtime. The door to the cafeteria opens and the youngsters in their dark school uniforms stream in and throng around the tables. “Gentlemen, please be seated!” a teacher calls, steering a group of youths towards a table. To cope with the midday rush, Harlington Upper now offers two sittings. Teachers on duty ensure that all of the children find a place. Those that have to wait must line up behind a guardrail installed for the purpose. The idea came from the students themselves, as did the furnishings and the entire layout of the cafeteria. They also chose the pale wooden tables and sturdy metal seats. Shane Bagby simply handed them a furniture catalogue he had brought with him from Bilfinger Berger Project Investments. The dining area is painted in pale blue and is now called the “Café d’Art.” Pop art posters by Warhol and Lichtenstein decorate the walls.

THE BURGER BAR IS GONE
Students continually pop into the kitchen with new menu suggestions. Elise Robinson thinks the choice of dishes is now “very good.” And sixth-former Karen Ansell adds, “We want to eat healthily. So it’s better if we aren't tempted in the first place.” That’s why the 17-year-old thinks it is “OK” that the chocolate vending machines have been removed.

But the students weren’t the only ones on a learning curve. Karen Chamberlain also had a few lessons to learn on the way to becoming a healthy cook. Shaking her head she recalls, “There was a time when we actually put up burger bars for the kids. And no one thought anything of it when a manufacturer of ready-made meals sponsored a new freezer for us.”

(Text: Kirsten Wörnle, Photos: Rainer Kwiotek)