Well done Jamie Oliver. A terrific program which had me in tears twice. Despite the over dramatisation and bad language I particularly liked the ambition of finding solutions rather than just raising questions on what to do about that muck in little plastic troughs.

The program proved that;

• good nutritious school food can be produced on an ingredients budget of around 40p per child
• dinner ladies can cook decent food if given the opportunity
• kids will eat ’strange’ meals if they are encouraged to join in cooking or visiting the local farm
• and dinner ladies will cry happy tears when they see their children eating the healthy food they have created. Real job satisfaction.

like many others, we have been writing about school food for 2 years and the win, win of kids eating better food. Unfortunately Jamie only just touched on getting the kids to visit their local farm to tell a more complete food story. He did not cover the additional win, win, of sourcing the food locally, and boosting the local economy, encouraging farmers to grow produce for the local community and cutting of food miles.

I am, like you, I imagine, frustrated by the fact that it takes a celebrity chef to get the government to do anything about school meals. I am however delighted that simply raising the ingredients budget is seen as only a small part of the solution. I am sure that if this was the only action the big caterers would have simply got the likes of Mr Mathews to increase the turkey content (meat, skin and gristle) in his Twisslers from 30% to 45%.

I am reliably informed that local farmers are seen as the best suppliers for schools and our work over the last 5 years will help many schools find their local farmers. So let’s keep up the pressure, If you haven’t registered to get our monthly newsletter please click here or email this to a friend. Or have a look at our new Fine Food Crusader videos and send the link to a friend.