Better food means better marks
Jamie Oliver is on a recent TED-prize-sponsored quest to better educate kids about what food is and give them better access to it. His talk at TED about it is both very depressing and very interesting.
Jamie Oliver
Diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the United States, right now, here today. This is a global problem. It's a catastrophe. It's sweeping the world. England is right behind you, as usual.
The Guardian reports on the success of his Feed Me Better campaign from 2004:
Guardian
Today an audience of prestigious economists was told that the healthier school dinners introduced by the celebrity chef [Jamie Oliver] had not only significantly improved pupils' test results, but also cut the number of days they were off sick.
[..]
Oliver described the research results as "fantastic". "It's the first time a proper study has been done into the positive effects of the campaign and it strongly suggests we were right all along," he said.
"Even while doing the programme, we could see the benefits to children's health and teachers. We could see that asthmatic kids weren't having to use the school inhalers so often, for example.
"We could see that it made them calmer and therefore able to learn."