After
thousands of children, parents, teachers and principals across Stockholm have
expressed their outrage against the capital’s butter ban in schools; the city
administration has decided to bring the spread back. According to the city councillor for schools,
Lotta Edholm, the kids and their parents are right to be upset: “I have tried to communicate that the schools
can serve both butter and low fat spread if they want. The cleverest solution
would be to let the students choose. But unfortunately the message I wanted to
get across has got lost along the way," said Edholm to daily Dagens
Nyheter (DN).
The
reason for the initial change was a decision by the Stockholm City local
authority in charge of education (Utbildningsnämnden) to make schools adhere to
guidelines issued by the National Food Agency (Livsmedelsverket). Behind the
decision are tightened rules in legislation regarding schools serving
nutritious food. To make things simpler for the schools, the local authority
chose to make the guidelines from the National Food Agency be the guiding rule
for all schools in the area.
The
majority of Stockholm schools therefore removed the more butter-based spreads
and replaced them with low fat alternative Becel, a controversial choice due to
some scientists linking it with heart-disease and cancer, or other low fat
spreads. But according to Lotta Edholm
the guidelines never meant a ban on butter in schools. “My interpretation of the guidelines has from
the beginning been that schools can serve both butter and marge. The School’s
Inspectorate's (Skolinspektionen) interpretation is different. And I find it a
little strange that the Inspectorate chooses to blindly listen to the National
Food Agency,” Edholm said.
According
to Edholm the kids should have the choice between the butter and the low-fat
spread and she repudiated any claim that the butter was removed due to
Stockholm children being overweight and needing to diet. “No, they definitely don’t need to diet. If we
could just have been able to sort this out ourselves without listening to the
School’s Inspectorate I don’t think anyone, politician or official, would have
even thought of removing the butter in favour of marge,” said Edholm to the
paper.
The Local Sweden
No comments:
Post a Comment