Joined at the hip

2 news items this morning on BBC Radio 4 struck home: secondary school canteen providers are up in arms declaring that meeting the new food quality regulations for the meals they deliver, will reduce variety and the children will go elsewhere. [Over a 3 week period school meals will have to reach a certain level of 14 vitamin and micronutrients such as iron, calcium and zinc.] The second item was an interview concerning the credit crunch effects on youth violence, where the interviewee described the relationship between the UK and the USA as joined at the hip! Here in the UK, Jamie Oliver & his ilk have caused a sea-change in the government's attitude to school meals but it's not joined up thinking. In some places school canteens have been provided, in others school kitchens have closed in order to free funds to pay for another teacher to provide cover for lesson planning time (how do you resolve two conflicting edicts within a limited budget!?). So if we really are joined at the hip, I wondered what was the take-up of school meals in the USA and did they have to meet certain nutrient  levels"¦..is it indeed only the variety of food on offer that determines pupil take-up  or is it the cost or,  just maybe, its  the amount of time allocated to eating the meal and the canteen facilities (seating, ability to "hang-out")....