Blue lollies, blue pop, blue bubble gum: WHY?

Baby and I chilling and playing with water.

It's been a bit of a hurtling through uncharted corners of space kind of week. As I've said before, half of my teaching timetable is non-food now. I didn't actually have a practical until the second week and only because I covered a colleague's class. Gateau with fresh cream and everything. It was too hot for it, a lot of the cream curdled before the kids even got into school. But they were good natured kids. Quite a few discussions about healthy eating and our schemes of work.
For those of you not in Britain, Jamie Oliver has caused a knee jerk revolution about food in schools. It is a bit misconstrued. If one was to believe the media, cooking isn't taught in any school in England. There is even talk of setting up lunch time and after school cooking classes with non-teachers. Which begs the question: what the heck is wrong with just re-instating Home Economics and getting rid of the product design focus of Food Technology? A quick survey will no doubt reveal that most if not all Food Tech teachers would prefer traditional 'this is how you cook and this is what food does to the body' type of curriculum.
At our school, the dinners have been changed, sodas and crisps and chocolate are not now sold by the school, but but but Charlie and his Icecream van still get to come on to the premises at lunch time to sell the kids blue ice lollies, blue bubble gum and blue panda pops. I watch my newbie tutor group come barreling in for register in the afternoon, faces and mouth tinged with (you guessed it) blue and a wild look in their eye and I know that the afternoon is going to be fraught for the teachers and them. After having an afternoon lesson with them and having to practically peel one kid off of the ceiling, I've decided that a bit of pressure will need to be applied to get this anomaly sorted out.