Will Jamie’s Success be everybody’s Success?

June 2005

By Luci Daniels BSc (Nutrition) SRD, Registered Dietitian, FDH Dietitian Consultant

Jamie Oliver’s involvement with school meals has certainly caused the sort of Government interest and action [hopefully] many of us have been trying to provoke for years.

The issues he highlighted are not new to school caterers – how to balance the books financially and offer food the children will eat. Not so easy with under 40p per day to spend on food and tight budgets that don’t allow staff time to prepare meals from scratch, as well as out of date kitchen equipment [if any!]. Hence the development of very cheap and not so cheerful or nutritious convenience foods such as the maligned ‘turkey twizzler’!

The underlying message is that parents do want their children to have more wholesome meals, preferably cooked at school. Given the poor food preferences of many of our children its no surprise that many of Jamie’s dishes were initially unfamiliar and unacceptable – but in the end the children did widen their food horizons and many did eat what was on offer.

The challenge now is for the Government to put money into school meals by upgrading kitchens, increasing food costs in your budgets and stopping the non-sense of the school meal service being a money making business. Any revised nutritional standards will hopefully be practical and realistic!

The quality parents want is good grub and a reduced intake of high salt, sugar, fat and additive–rich meals – at a reasonable price.

Lets hope the Government comes up with the cash and we can all be winners – especially the children who may learn to choose healthier meals and improve their attitudes to food and health and then the health of their children in the long term.

Then we are all winners!

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