9-Year-Old Food Critic Shakes Up School Lunches

By Alyssa Newcomb

May 23, 2012 4:40pm

 

                                                        (Image Credit: neverseconds.blogspot.com.es)

The lunches served at one primary school in Scotland were not always healthy or palatable, which prompted amateur food reviewer Martha Payne, 9, to start a blog.
“They’re a wee bit small and sometimes they’re not very nice either,” she told the BBC about her school lunches.

With a little help from her dad, the aspiring writer started a blog called Never Seconds.
(check out her blog) Her first post on May 8 showed a picture of that day’s school lunch — a small cheeseburger, two potato croquettes, three cucumber slices and a popsicle.

“You don’t really get much vegetables,” she told the BBC.

Martha rates each meal on taste (she calls it the Food-o-meter) and health, while she keeps a tally of  mouthfuls, courses, price and pieces of hair. (She hasn’t found any since she started the blog.)

After Martha’s blog got international attention, her father met with the school council, which announced all students would be allowed unlimited servings of fruit, vegetables and bread.
The difference was immediately clear on Martha’s blog. The days of a few sad droppings of corn were over.

“For the first time ever I have seen at lunch cherry tomatoes, radishes, carrot and cucumber shreddings,” Martha wrote on May 15.

The blog captured the attention of celebrity chef and healthy school lunch crusader Jamie Oliver, who sent the student a tweet of encouragement and later a signed copy of his book.
“Keep it up!” Oliver wrote.

“Thanks Jamie, I do intend to keep it up!” she replied.