Mr Balls and the Chubby Brigade

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary in England who is rather better at his job than his name might suggest yesterday introduced a fantastic initiative that should rapidly be adopted by other countries before our school doors need to be widened and the seats load tested for the little chubsters! We are all blue in the face hearing about the growing obesity problem but apart from the forward thinking Mr Balls there are very few innovating ideas out there.

"hey hey you, yeah you, supersize me"

The idea is to introduce at least an hour of cooking every week for teenagers with the focus placed on educating them rather than just stuffing the canteen full of spinach and apples rather than the chips and sausages they are used to. Nothing pushes you towards something more than being told you can't have it! Another major advantage with this idea is that with the current trend of celebrity chefs showing no signs of abating the world of food has never been as appealing, so allowing the kids to get a taste of it so early will inevitably lead to a whole new crop of Gordon's coming up through the ranks.

"Hey has anybody seen my chair? I'm sure there was one here a second ago"

There are a few weak points in the strategy though...It's all well and good the 12 year old learning how to make a wholesome soup in school but is Mrs Chubster really going to let him cook the family dinner when he gets home? See the biggest cause of children becoming more and more obese is the food that their parents feed them. Why not have a weekly class where the parents and kids cook together and not only improve their diet but get to bond with each other. What really annoys me is people saying that their kids are just genetically obese** and there is nothing they can do about it! WHAT? You can't do anything about it??? How about turning off his Wii, Xbox or playstation and telling them to move their ass around a sports pitch and not feeding them processed beef burgers with chips and milkshakes! Oh yeah and while I am on a rant about this why not leave your big people carrier or SUV at home for a couple of days this week and cycle to school with the kids scoring a tripe whammy of saving them from future heart disease, fitting into your tight jeans next time and cutting CO2 emissions. Fat Chance I'd say!

Help Clear the streets and leave the SUV at home tomorrow!


**I am talking about people who are massively overweight through laziness and over eating and not people who may have a genuine weight problem.