The government has declared war on deep fryers. This is a once-in-a-generation change, they say, as if a nation’s education system hasn’t been rotting from the inside for two decades while ministers were busy announcing things.
The new school food standards ban deep-fried items and mandate nutritional minimums. Children will no longer eat chips. They will instead eat baked sweet potato wedges that taste like compressed sadness, served alongside something called “ancient grain salad” that will make them fart during maths.
What’s remarkable is the timing. Literacy rates are collapsing. Maths scores are in freefall. One in five kids leaves secondary school unable to read properly. But yes, let’s solve this with a deep fryer ban.
The government is correct that school meals matter. The mistake is believing that swapping fried carbs for quinoa addresses anything beyond a press release. The real problem isn’t what’s on the plate—it’s that schools are underfunded, understaffed, and designed by people who haven’t spent five minutes in a actual classroom since 1987.
A child eating a baked sweet potato instead of chips will still sit in a classroom with forty other kids, one teacher, and a budget that hasn’t moved since 2010. But at least the government can claim victory. At least there’s a policy announcement. At least something changed, even if it’s cosmetic.
The deep fryer ban takes effect next year. By then, we’ll have moved on to banning something else while the actual crisis festers.