Neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/

Martha gave her cheeseburger lunch (above) a rating of 2/10

The school lunch that triggered Martha's blog

The story of Martha Payne: a food fight the bossy bureaucrats were never going to win and a truth hard to stomach for the ruthless stamp of authority. [Daily Telegraph]

The young food-blogger recounted how she was taken into the headmistress's office and told that she was no longer allowed to use a camera in the canteen.

It didn't take long for popular outcry to force local government to reverse its ban of NeverSeconds, the school lunch photography blog written by 9-year-old Martha Payne of western Scotland. For the past two months, Martha's blog has documented the unappealing, non-nutritious lunches she was  served in her Scottish primary school. Her mother is a doctor and her father has a small farming property. She started blogging in early May and went viral in days. She had millions of hits around the world within a few weeks and got support from TV chef, Jamie Oliver, whose series “Jamie’s School Dinners” had kicked off school-food reform in England. http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/

All this talk of school lunches makes me think of the ones I was subjected to in Lancashire in the 1960s and 70s, when they were referred to as "school dinners". I remember trying to hide leathery roast heart, and other greyish tough meats, under a mound of lukewarm and lumpy mashed potato. The school "dinner ladies" would be "on patrol" making sure no meat was left on the plate, which is why we hid things! And I remember my father (a farmer) telling me that when he took his cows to market, the old ones were sold as dog food, but the even older ones -- that were considered too bad for the dog food companies -- went to the state school lunch program!

Martha Payne