Children Only Want Chips, Jamie Oliver!

Yesterday, the new Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, claimed that Jamie Oliver’s drive to improve pupils’ diets has flopped. So was all that hard work for nothing?

How good are Exmouth schools at providing healthy lunches and at

encouraging pupils to eat them? Can you comment on your child’s school

experience? Or maybe you know Exmouth’s best school cook? Do your

dinner ladies work magic? They'll have to next term, to support the new standards.

The minister told the British Medical Association that “lecturing people is counterproductive” and reported that fewer children are eating school meals.

But who has been lecturing? Jamie Oliver, 35, who has campaigned for better school dinners since 2005 (visit Jamie’s website for more information), said that the comments made by the minister were inaccurate and ‘an insult’ to thousands of people – school staff and parents – who have been working hard to feed school children nutritious, hot meals.

Judy Hargadon, chief executive of the School Food Trust, said: “Following Jamie’s School Dinners and the introduction of new standards in 2006, take-up has gone up over the last two years – reversing a 30-year decline.”

New school food standards set to come in to effect this Autumn mean that things have to change even further! The School Food Trust website details the transformation that schools are going through and has sections for school cooks and caterers, schools, parents and carers, children and those partners working with schools – something for everyone! How new Government policy will affect this is yet to be seen.

Whether children are eating less school dinners because they are boring and too healthy is debatable. Some say it's because they can’t afford the average £2 school dinner. Many schools were originally serving cheaper food because they gave the contracts to the lowest bidder – but that brought down quality as well.  

Judy Hargadon adds: “We know that children are very happy to eat healthy food – the biggest barrier to them having school food is not the food itself but the negative experiences of lunchtime such as queues and noise.”

So should more money be invested in to providing better dining areas and manpower to manage swift progression through the canteen? What is it that is still so unappealing about school dinners?