Where the School Food Trust can stick their lunchbox...

An organisation called the School Food Trust has issued a report critising the content of the average school lunch box and by association the average parents who fill them.

Instead of sandwiches and a bag of crisps they suggest parents should include such delicacies as:

- Butternut squash soup with wholegrain bread
- Cous cous with roasted vegetables and chickpeas
- Wholegrain pasta salad with tomatoes, green beans and sweetcorn in green pesto sauce
- Low-fat cream cheese on wholegrain cracker with grapes

Now apart from the logistical problems of trying to get a six year old to safely transport soup to school, one wonders if those at the Schools Food Trust have actually tried to feed said child cous cous, chickpeas or wholegrain crackers?

This sort of out of touch nannying simply raises the hackles of hard pressed parents and turns the attention to the people and the organisation that can come up with this nonsense.

And being a publicly funded body they conveniently provide their statement of accounts on line.

And in it we find in 2010/11 the Schools Food Trust received more than £11.5 million from the public purse. Its Chief Executive, Judy Haragon, was paid £95,000 with a pension worth £143,000 - £35,000 more than 2010. In total its senior staff were paid a cool quarter of a million and they still found a £15,000 bung to retain the services of a celebrity chef.

Given the state of the public finances, cutting needless spending is a prerequisite. And it seems to me the Schools Food Trust is a pretty good place to start.