The free market is starting to offer positive solutions to help reduce the nutrition deficit, writes Haydn Shaughnessy
The question on many American lips right now is: Can I get a decent meal without having to do the washing up, or the shopping, or the prep? The answer is yes. The free market in the United States is answering the call of nutrition-deprived children across the land. As are some of the state and city authorities.
America tends to be where innovations begin. In contrast to their can-do spirit, to date the memorable Irish policy proposals to counter the nutritional deficit have tended towards the nervous and negative.
Can we discourage children from eating badly by banning junk food ads at times when they watch television, for example, or banning vending machines in primary schools?
The reasoning behind advertising bans is understandable if uninspiring.
The Obesity Task Force revealed in their recent evidence-gathering that the vast majority of food advertising is spent on convincing us to buy the foods we should eat less of.
The problem of accentuating the negative though is not just that it potentially makes the banned more attractive but it does nothing actually to replace the undesirable with something better.
On the positive side, there has been the hint of tax concessions or grants for the provision of healthy food and the usual determination to make sure children exercise. All well and good but where is the play of imagination or the fractious creativity of the marketplace?
In America free enterprise is beginning to offer up answers and a few clues about what might usefully happen here.
Britain and Norway have also been experimenting.
In Britain a scheme to give free fruit and vegetables to 4-6 year olds began at the end of last year.
Worryingly there were strings attached.
The UK Department of Health sent teachers the big "Grub" story book and encouraged them to get children to join in and sing along to the fruit and veg CD.
Oh dear!
In Norway researchers studied the results of a school fruit give-away and found: "Pupils attending free fruit schools had significantly higher intake of fruit and vegetables at school than the pupils at paid fruit and no fruit schools (mean intakes were 1.1, 0.4 and 0.2 portions, respectively)."
No surprises there other than the miniscule amount of fruit and vegetables many children are eating (one fifth of a portion!) unless it comes as a freebie.
In the United States too there are publicly funded schemes to increase healthy food intake. Two deserve mention.
The Farmers Market Nutrition Program in Pennsylvania must be one of the most courageous moves out there. It is a blatant subsidy of local nutritious produce. Under the programme - the 2005 version has just been launched - eligible seniors, pregnant or breastfeeding women, and infants and children are given vouchers that they can exchange at farmers' markets or roadside stalls for local produce.
It supports farms that sell locally and re-engages junk food addicts with the land. And it costs only $5.5million (€4.46 million) each year.
In the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the recreation department has created a model nutrition programme delivering nutritious meals to the city's children during the summer holidays.
At over 50 sites through the city's poorer areas kids can just turn up and eat. The recreation department last year served them 80,00 meals. This year they hope to serve 100,000 meals, breakfast and lunch to children in poor neighbourhoods.
The programme is funded by the US Department of Agriculture and is aimed at raising nutritional awareness as well as providing nutritious meals through the summer break
In London four of the largest hospitals are running a scheme to support local organic farming. Their combined budgets make them the largest single food-purchasing entity in the British capital.
By sourcing local nutritious fruit and vegetables they provide patients with fresher food and, equally important, assist in the gradual conversion of agriculture to old-fashioned market gardening.
These schemes are destined to be less effective for the middle class family than the good old American free market. What made McDonald's a dominant force in the world of food - the franchise system - is currently being adapted by three new, thriving, fast-growing companies that provide the means for families to eat better with minimal hassle, like washing up.
The chief executive of Dinner by Design, Julie Duffy, explains: "Women today, of my generation, well, our moms went to work so we didn't see them cook, didn't learn from them how to plan a week's meals, and frankly we are intimidated by the kitchen. And women are exposed to packaged meals, prepared meals, deli sections. Despite the consequences, the preservatives and the lack of freshness, that is still the wave of the future."
That's the problem she set out to solve. How to eat well without turning to the packaged, preserved meal. And the answer was DIY American style.
Julie, in fact, was previously a high flyer in the corporate world. She gave up her demanding job to be a full time mother only to find that she had no idea how to shop for and prepare seven dinners a week. Thus, Dinner by Design was born.
Dinner by Design, like its competitors Super Suppers and Dream Dinners, is an entirely new retail genre: the meal assembly programme (MAP).
The benefits of MAPs to the customer are that all the meal planning and shopping is done for you. You have no mess to clear. You have twelve, balanced, one-pot meals, as well as starters and desserts, to bring from the deep freeze and carry to the cooker during the month.
Dinner by Design has the benefit of being prepaid before it sources the food, which is great for cash flow. They can buy fresh on the day as well as source high-quality ingredients with absolutely no waste.
Win-win.
Meal assembly programmes are bringing families back together around the dinner table.
According to Julie, they stretch the palette of the average family as well as increasing the confidence of women customers. And they take preservatives out of the food equation.
The day I spoke to Julie her company had signed eight new franchisees in the Illinois area.
It may not be the perfect solution for time-stressed families in Ireland but variations on the ready meal that provide fresh, nutritious and balanced meals have to be welcomed wherever they come from.