Birmingham chef tells of fears for children who live on take-aways
Mar 7 2009 by Edward Chadwick, Birmingham Mail
CHILDREN in poor areas of Birmingham are at greater risk of obesity because their parents are setting a bad example by never setting foot in the kitchen, a fat-fighting chef has claimed.
Adam Pickett runs one-day cookery courses with youngsters across the city and says some are more familiar with take-away cartons than basic utensils.
He was speaking at an obesity summit held at Villa Park to discuss solutions to an obesity epidemic among children in Birmingham which sees a quarter dangerously overweight by the time they leave primary school.
Mr Pickett said: “Kids from some parts of Birmingham are much worse at cooking then others.
“It tends to be the areas where you’ve got a lot of single parent families who don’t cook themselves or can’t afford to go out and buy nice ingredients and areas where there are a lot of take-away shops.
“We’ve lost two or three generations of people who can cook because it isn’t taught in school and I strongly believe that is the reason that we have such an obesity problem.”
The junior cooking classes form part of the pioneering Villa Vitality scheme which has seen 5,000 children benefit from the partnership between Aston Villa and the Heart of Birmingham PCT.
