| School meals
I think this was the most important job I ever did, and when on my 70th birthday I resigned to spend more time with Ernest in Lanzarote, I left with real regret, but really confident that the corner had been turned and the team would continue with ever-increasing success. My only concern was that the Government might lose its nerve, or a new Government would not see the point. So I made a speech at my leaving party telling Ed Balls, Secretary of State, what kept me awake at night.
I do feel strongly about it. To be pompous about it, what could be more important than changing children’s diet so that they grow up healthy, happy and useful to their families and to society? Obese, unhealthy people have a wretched time of it: they are more likely to fail at school, to be unemployed, to earn less, to be unhappy, to have a shorter life. We need to fix the British diet now.
I applied for the job of Chair of the School Food Trust because the subject of food and cooking is dear to my heart and with my background in food writing, in education, in food businesses and in the media, I thought I could do it. Happily the selection panel thought so too.
The Trust, which is a quango reporting to the Department of Children, Schools and Families, set up after Jamie woke up the world as to just how dire some school food was. Of course some of it was terrific, and we need to use those schools who get it right to help others.
School food now has to meet standards set by government, and it is illegal to sell children sweets and chocolates, crisps, fizzy drinks etc in school. The new nutritional standards have meant changes in cooking methods, with cooks increasingly preparing fresh food from scratch, and menus and methods becoming modern and healthy. Today you are more likely to see stir frying than deep frying going on, and Spicy Cous Cous than chips.
The School Food Trust's job is to encourage take up of the new dinners. They do this by trying to persuade five audiences: they want children to give school meals a go; parents not to undo at home the good work done in school; teachers to regard food teaching as vital; caterers to train their staff to be better cooks and supervisors; and local authorities to pay for modern kitchens and pleasant dining rooms.
Needless to say there is a ton of work behind this. And it is beginning to work. There was a slight drop in the numbers of school children eating school meals after the Jamie campaign, when junk was basically banned. But since then primary schools numbers are climbing and the fall in secondary has stopped. Which, though not head-line grabbing, is pretty good news. After all, even if the numbers were not improving, 40% of children eating healthy food is a great improvement on 40% of children eating chips and chocolate!
The Trust is tackling the problem with a raft of tools, all of which are described on our website www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk. Here are a few of them:
Million Meals:
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This is an initiative to increase take-up. By registering to be a MM school, you get real help, particularly from other schools who have already cracked the problem you have. Maybe the queues are too long, the dining too noisy, the food uninspired, the parents hostile, the mobile chippy too close to the gates, the lunch hour too short. Well the Trust know the school that knows the answer.
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Lets Get Cooking
The Trust got £20 million from the lottery to help this one. It is to establish centres for 5,000 cookery clubs in schools all over the country which will ensure that children and their parents, learn to cook.
FEAST (Food Excellence and Skills Training)
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These are centres for school cooks and caterers to get encouragement, help, and qualifications. Many school cooks were hired during the anything-goes era and they may not be up to scratch. And some of the older cooks, who cook well, have had no on-going training and they are still a bit stuck in the Macaroni cheese followed by suet pudding and custard era. If lawyers and doctors, teachers and office workers get regular training, surely cooks should? The cooks love it and come back from courses full of enthusiasm and confidence. It’s great.
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GET REAL
Everyone knows that teenagers, who nature seems to have programmed to be bolshie, are not easy to persuade. Get Real talks to them in a tone and language they relate to, with theatre work-shops, with advertising, with info on-line.
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