Is it a sign of racism if children don't like foreign spicy food? Apparently yes, according to a British government agency.

Toddlers who turn their noses up at spicy food from overseas could be branded racists by a Government-sponsored agency.

The National Children's Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

This could include a child of as young as three who says "yuk" in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

The guidance by the NCB is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a young age.

Read the rest at the Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/education/2261307/Toddlers-who-dislike-spicy-food-racist,-say-report.html)

Can "racism" be spotted this way? Or has "Political Correctness" gone too far?

(Or, is it, as some of the answers indicate, shoddy reporting by the Daily Telegraph?)

As a parent of a young chlid, and having friends, many of whom have children aged 6 or less, almost all toddlers and small children are picky eaters. It doesn't matter whether the food is "foreign" or not. Heck, it doesn't even have to be a food they are unfamiliar with. A food merely presented in a way different from what they are familiar with may elicit a "yuck" response from the child. My kid is just under a year old, and is now eating solid food. We always offer him whatever we are eating, and while he is pretty good when it comes to eating just about anything, there are certain things he just won't eat. The problem isn't that he's a picky eater - it's what all small children do.

This is just ridiculous. I mean, this is past silly, past mind boggling, beyond crass to just plane arrogant and stupid. If they did this as a joke, it would be insulting to both children and people who suffered legitimate racism. Doing this seriously just means they need lobotomies.

Political correctness gone crazy, with fanatics not listening to common sense and proudly declaring that to be a good way to effect change. When are we going to wake up and inject some common sense into society?

I'm clearly racist against all cauliflower farmers. Brussel sprout farmers are on my terrorist watch list.

I dont know, the link could be interpreted as: "Yuk, I am not going to eat filthy paki food because my dad say they never wash" instead of as "Yuk, I don't know this food I don't want to eat it."

The general thesis to look for children who might get some funky values from home and then try to at least balance that is quite sound.

I dont know, the link could be interpreted as: "Yuk, I am not going to eat filthy paki food because my dad say they never wash" instead of as "Yuk, I don't know this food I don't want to eat it."Aside from the fact that 3 year old kids aren't usually sophisticated enough to recognize that a food is "ethnic" just by looking at it, disliking the food of another culture is not the same thing as disliking its people.

My wife doesn't like Cajun food...and it isn't because she hates Cajuns.

So just because on other forums I use the tag line "Brussel Sprouts aren't food, they're ammunition" I automatically hate all Belgians?

And becuase I avoid Taco Bell as a matter of kindness to the people that are around me, I automatically hate Mexicans?

Brittish tax pounds at waste! I hope that didn't come off as anti-English...

This is rather downright hilarious, I think.

It advises nursery teachers to be on the alert for childish abuse such as: "blackie", "Pakis", "those people" or "they smell".
Well, this makes a lot of sense. I'm surprised they don't do this already.

Is the article, however, focusing on the ridiculous value too much as opposed to what's actually important in this guidance?

From a fair perspective, I guess encouraging them to eat foreign food instead of being xenophobic does help...

Why do you intelligent guys feed off this kind of crap journalism?

The telegraph have highlighted ONE line in a 366 page report and have highlighted it out of context.

I'd rather concentrate on why they did that rather than the line itself.

What a bull**** story. Barmy is totally right about this - The Telegraph are trying to sell papers via stupid headlines.

I'd love to see how The Sun deals with this one...

What Barmy said was pretty much what I in a roundabout way was trying to say. It is taken wildly out of context and what I tried to do in my post was to show that it might not be such an outbreak of PCness gone wild as most people took it for.

Well, on a mildly related note:
Texas County Official Sees Race in Term 'Black Hole' (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,380143,00.html)
Basically, a Texas county commissioners' meating was talking about traffic tickets disappearing into the Central Collections Office. A (coincidentally white) commissioner compared the office to a black hole and a (not so coincidentally black) commissioner took it as a racist comment. He (the black commissioner) also thinks Angel's and Devil's Food Cake are racist. I suppose by that logic, the Great White Shark is a racist name, right? And the Killer Whale must be racist against blacks and whites?

This just goes to show that people are becoming ridiculously paranoid about racism.

It's like I've always said, it's illegal to discriminate. unless you're discriminating against a British, straight, white 20-something guy, then it's all just dandy ;)

Seriously though, insecurity in this world is painfully rife. If people can't look at the word "black" without thinking someone's trying to belittle them, they have serious issues. Personally, I haven't run into anything I would seriously consider racist, sexist, homophobic, you name it for years. It's all about perception, or should i say mis-perception.

The problem I have is that words like "racist", "sexist" and "homophobic" are so incredibly freaking loaded. They are labels that carry with them dialogue-destroying emotions and judgements. One you hang that label of "racist" around some poor bugger's neck, you can dismiss everything he says because "he's just a racist." You can immediately pigeonhole him into the same catagory as the KKK even if he's merely a 4 year old who doesn't like curry. I understand that racist behaviours should be nipped in the bud, but we should also acknowledge that some opinions or behaviours do not merit that drastic and horrible a label.

Case in point -- my students have fed me lots of Somali food. I eat it to be polite, but I don't like it. Does that mean I am a RACIST, only one step away from organizing my own personal Night of the Long Knives to eliminate the Somali scourge from Canada? NO! It just means I don't like the frigging spices they use. Idiots should stop making mountains out of molehills -- and newspapers should be more careful with their headlines.

Can "racism" be spotted this way? Or has "Political Correctness" gone too far?

(Or, is it, as some of the answers indicate, shoddy reporting by the Daily Telegraph?)
Of course this is PC going too far. And of course this is shoddy reporting - it is the Daily Telegraph we're talking about.