Primary School Children's Knowledge And Awareness Of Food Essay

Primary School Children's Knowledge And Awareness Of Food - Essay Example A Nation-wide Public Health Issue: According to Purely Nutrition (n.d.), 27.7% of children under 11 years of age are in the overweight or obese category. On average young people eat less than the recommended 5 portions of fruit and vegetables per day and 20% of young people do not eat any fruit in a typical week. Further 58% of children between 7 and 10 years of age spend less than an hour per day participating in moderately intense activities. This is a nation-wide public health issue and a target has been set to reverse the year-on-year increase in obesity for children under 11 years of age by 2010. Historical Review: Local authorities have been under a duty to provide school meals since the Provision of Meals Act 1906 which resulted from the rejection of 60% of recruits for the Boer War due to ill health resulting from poor nutrition (Spear, 2007). School meals became mandatory in 1944 during rationing in the Second World War. However, in 1980 the Education Act allowed local authorities to tender provision out. This resulted in a price war with the nutritional value being the first victim (Spear, 2007). Nelson et al (2005) point out that a major incentive was saving money. In 1980 expenditure on school meals were approximately  £400 million. By 2005 13% of schools had no kitchen facilities at all, having dismantled them. According to Flintoff (2005),  £154m was lopped off the school meals budget since 1994. Government Action: The issue of poor diet and obesity in young people came to the public’s attention following celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s 2005 television series - Jamie’s School Dinners - indicating that the average spend on school dinners was  £0.37 which is a dismal amount given that lunchtime makes an important contribution to the nutrition of primary school children in England. (Flintoff, 2005).  

Critical Design Issues in the Contemporary World Essay

Critical Design Issues in the Contemporary World - Essay Example Research has demarcated means to market products not merely as solutions to actual problems but as panaceas to human desire. Consumers are â€Å"convinced† through sizable marketing efforts to acquire certain products to enhance their lifestyles. In this scenario the designer must produce objects that seem aesthetically either appealing or appalling to grab the consumer’s attention. (Dorst and Dijkhuis 1995) Functionality in design is fast receding. In comparison various designers from the past balanced both form and functionality. Architecture, film making, literature, performing arts all reflected an intertwined state of balance between form and functionality that was often hard to decipher. Form has been encouraged in recent years in preference to functionality. A designer ought to be truly independent of commercial influences to exploit their true creative potential. The dominance of the commercial influence on design has rendered design incapable of displaying more subtle tones of thought and reflection. Most products today are designed with a consideration to use and throw away as desired. This in turn encourages the commercial design of products that are more or less disposable. It is debateable is consumer’s demands push such behaviour or if business tendencies to spur consumption spur such tendencies. However what is apparent is that design has been tainted largely with commercial influences that have modified its original precepts. Another competing influence on design strategies is economics. Economical design strategies have shot to the fore front following the eighties and the nineties when advances in manufacturing strategies meant that designs could be optimised further to save material and machine costs. (Simon 1996) Large scale manufacturing operations encourage designers to optimise both the use of material as well as to optimise the manufacturing techniques in use. Such a strategy ensures that the produced design is provi ding desired functionality at low costs to the manufacturer. This aids the business operation to maximise profitability by reducing base costs while keeping profit margins higher. Economic considerations have clearly impacted the length and breadth of the design industry whether the automobile industry is considered or whether fashion design is considered. The base contention is nearly always the same to cut base costs through the optimised use of materials and processes. Often designers produce designs that are then optimised by engineers or other manufacturing experts to remove what could be considered essential design features such as curves, tricky surfaces and the like. This ensures that the design is simplified for manufacturing. (Faste 2001) Similarly clothing designs are modified too such as using different pigments for achieving dimmer or otherwise different colours etc. Overall, economics serve as a major influence on design methods and the affected design domain includes all forms and manners of designs. Large influences on design in the contemporary world stems from globalisation of cultures, societies, ideas and ultimately design influences. The fusion of various cultural influences has produced individuals that are well aware of local values and traditions just as they are well aware of design influences in another part of the world. For example, Japanese designs were known the world over for their subtle and precise character. The