A Meaty Issue

On Saturday evening, I made a bad decision. I’d been exploring the streets of London for hours, and the thought of travelling back home to make something, anything, out of my dwindling supply of eggs and rice was not exactly the most exciting evening ever. So, obviously, when I had the chance of getting a Five Guys, I couldn’t resist. And, obviously, I regretted it soon after.

But that’s the issue. The lure of fast food can be overwhelming at times and, I guess, for many of us, we all succumb sometimes to that need for instant gratification that fast food so easily provides. This is despite the plethora of blogs, vlogs, articles, books, TV shows and demonstrations all telling us to eat more healthily, to exercise more and sleep better. They mean well, but, in my case, it’s oh so very easy to justify such actions when the time comes and think of the consequences afterwards.

So trying to engage young people in this task, to live better lifestyles is, I imagine, going to be an even greater challenge. But this is what I have decided to focus on during my time at Langdon Park School.

Since starting at the school, during the frontline phase of the Year Here course, I have witnessed the magnetic pull that pizzas, cookies and sugary drinks have on the students and equally the repulsion towards vegetables and fruit. Naïvely I thought Jamie Oliver had sorted all of this out completely a few years ago with his school meals campaign but, unfortunately, these issues persist. To take an example, for one student I know, his lunch for the day consisted of four cookies. In other cases many students ignore lunch altogether.

The most eye-opening fact I discovered recently, though, is the connection between sleep and food. Simply put, poor quality sleep increases the body’s cravings for sugary and fatty foods. For students, engaged as they are with smartphones and social media, it is not unusual to hear that they only had four hours’ sleep during the previous night. Ideally, teenagers should be having between eight and ten hours’ sleep. So the use of smartphones appears to contribute directly to a lack of sleep which in turn leads to bad diets. Overall this contributes not only to growing obesity levels but also sluggishness, disengagement and a lack of concentration in class. For students, the issue is exacerbated due to the tougher school curriculum which requires them to use even more memory and analytical skills in their work. As such, there is a risk of causing them increased stress which may lead to an increase in mental health issues.

Given these problems, the question is how to try and alleviate them.

Every day we are bombarded with information about living more healthily, but I am not so sure whether the message gets to the students, or their families. My gut feeling is that there is little to no engagement with the usual vehicles through which such messages are distributed. This is something I will be researching.

What’s more complicated is the perceived and actual costs of adopting a healthier lifestyle, assuming the families have bought into it. According to the ‘Deprivation in Tower Hamlets | Analysis of the 2015 Indices of Deprivation’, 39% of children in Tower Hamlets live in income-deprived households. This figure actually rises to 43% in Poplar, where Langdon Park School is based. Therefore the capabilities of families to change to a healthier lifestyle is more difficult in this area.

Due to these factors, I am exploring ways through which I can disseminate crucial information about health and practical tips to lead a healthier lifestyle that is both memorable and affordable for families. This would include informing students to turn on ‘Night Shift’ mode on their phones, in order to reduce the amount of melatonin-affecting “blue light” which reduces the body’s capacity to sleep, providing easy-to-use recipes and key community contacts so families can get further information and support.

I feel slightly hypocritical preaching about healthier living, given my shortcomings on Saturday, but I think this itself hides another insight. In trying to effect change, we have to be sympathetic to each other in this process; to force it on people is to invite resistance. Therefore we have to approach the the challenge subtly, forgivingly and helpfully. I’m keen to see how far this works in the first instance.

To draw this piece to a conclusion, there are very real challenges facing our society through poor sleep and the effect that this has on the rest of the working day. The need to always be connected presents a real challenge to our physical and mental wellbeing and more so for young people, as they navigate through their teenage years. In my view, schools can play a greater role in ensuring that their community is provided with the best information and resources to thrive in a healthier environment. I hope that I can contribute to this change in at least a small way.