Junk food is set to be banned from school canteens and vending machines, Education Secretary Ruth Kelly is to announce.

Sweets, chocolates and fizzy drinks will not be available anywhere in schools in the drive to end the “scandal” of children on junk food diets, she will say.

The minister will say cheap burgers and sausages must be banned from canteen menus and new nutritional standards will be brought in for all school food from September 2006.

Under the plans, which are expected to require new laws, vending machines will have to stock items such as milk, bottled water and fresh fruit instead.

The reforms follow Government promises to improve the quality of school meals after TV chef Jamie Oliver highlighted the problem in a national campaign.

Earlier this year Ms Kelly promised Ј280 million for improving school meals, including new kitchens and more money to buy better ingredients.

The Government will publish the full findings of the school meals review panel set up to investigate how to improve school food next week, she said. The panel’s report will include detailed plans for “tough new nutritional standards”, Ruth Kelly said.

From “UK News”

Already, the chefs of New Orleans want to get back to their kitchens.

“In New Orleans, people live for food and it’s going to be one of the first things as people come back,” Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, said last week.

“You’re going to see people cooking pots of etouffee out on the streets to feed their family and friends even before they have power in their homes,” he said from temporary offices in Baton Rouge.

New Orleanians are serious foodies – 1 in 10 work in the industry — who are steeped in a culture of spicy, seafood-laden Cajun and Creole dishes that grew out of the region’s ethnic hodge-podge of immigrants and slaves.

“It wasn’t trendy. It wasn’t a fad. It was food that had been cooked for hundreds and hundreds of years,” said Brennan-Martin. “There was the realization that, 'Hey, we’ve got something here.’ "

But with the city’s nearly 3,500 restaurants shuttered or ruined by flooding, looting and fires, and its residents now scattered across the country, the survival of that culture is in question.

Restaurateurs such as Kenny LaCour, owner of Cuvee Restaurant just outside the French Quarter, say rebuilding and preserving that culture is a priority, like writing down a dying grandmother’s recipes.

And that’s more than power and clean water. It’s also a matter of supplies, such as the local seafood featured so prominently on so many menus. Much of the fishing fleets and processors who provided it have been decimated.

Some restaurateurs will leave. But food is the soul of this city and those who cook it — many of whom have been here for decades — say they and it will persevere.

From Lansing State Journal

The awards ceremony will be held on 27-29 May 2005 in Toronto, Ontario, as part of the annual Dietitians of Canada conference, to honour the regional and national winners. It will be attended by key stakeholders interested in the nutritional well-being of children. Speaking of Food and Healthy Living shines a candid and revealing light on the thoughts and feelings of parents of children age 6 to 12 as they deal with helping their children achieve healthy weights. While many factors contribute to healthy weights, this report specifically looks at healthy eating, physical activity, and self-esteem, and it shows how parents relate to those factors when it comes to the weight of their children.

Early humans living alongside great apes million years ago may have gained a competitive evolutionary advantage by embracing a primitive version of the Atkins Diet, according to new research.

Peter Lucas of George Washington University said, that children with too many crooked teeth in a small jaw may have evolution to thank, as tool use and cooking have reduced food-particle sizes, resulting in facial dwarfing. Lucas, author of Dental Function Morphology: How Teeth Work, said that food-particle size correlates with the size of a creature’s teeth, jaws, and body size. The first human ancestor probably learned to cook to spare his little teeth, Lucas said. After all, a cooked potato can reduce stress to molars by up to 82 percent, compared with a raw potato.

He also says: “Most of the dental decay (dental caries) and periodontal (gum) disease that we see started with the high consumption of cultivated (seed) grain products just less than 10000 years ago. The nutritional content of these food items comes from contained starches that are usually bound in seeds… The major problem with the modern (Western) diet is not with these starches, but with sucrose. This forms an exceptionally adhesive layer to the teeth, more so than other common sugars. It may be thought that this effect should have some natural defense, but sucrose is not a common sugar in plants”.

Step By Step Cookbook Series of Arkaim Publishing House is honored as Best Series of Food Books in the World.

Orëbro, Sweden, 11 February held the 1Oth Gourmand World Cookbook Awards this year ceremony.

The awards started at the Frankfurt Book Fair as one single competition. The founder of the award — Edouard Cointreau, producer of world famous liqueur and Remi Martin and Frapin cognacs.

There are now Gourmand competitions worldwide, and books are received in 30 languages.

After 10 years, 228 different publishers from 40 countries have received a Gourmand Wine Book Awards. Over two thirds won only once.

Publishing House ARKAIM is certified as leading producer of food books in 2004. The award was presented on 11 February to the CEO of Arkaim Publishing House Vassiliy Kurbatskikh.