Pupils Snub Chef Jamie’s Crusade for Healthy Food

By Laura Clark

JAMIE Oliver’s crusade against unhealthy school dinners has led to 400,000 pupils deserting the service, it was claimed yesterday.

Demand for lunches has slumped almost 20 per cent in secondary schools since his campaign to banish junk food.

The TV chef inspired a Government drive which replaced canteen staples such as Turkey Twizzlers, burgers and chips with pasta, fresh vegetables and fish.

But politicians say the dinners service is in ‘meltdown’ because the changes have been brought in too quickly.

‘Instead of boosting the number of children taking up healthy school meals, Government policy has contributed to an implosion of the service,’ said Liberal Democrat schools spokesman David Laws.

There are just over 4million pupils in primary schools and around 3.3million in secondaries.

Figures released yesterday by the School Food Trust showed nearly two-thirds of secondary pupils are shunning school meals. Take-up last year was 37.7 per cent – against 44.9 per cent two years before.

In primary schools, the popularity of lunches has dwindled from 44.9 per cent in 2004/05 to 41.2 per cent in 2006/07. It means 236,000 fewer secondary pupils and 150,000 primary children choose canteen meals.

The figures disguise wide variations across the country. In the East of England, school dinners take-up in secondary schools slumped 13 per cent last year.

The findings prompted renewed calls for children to be barred from leaving school at lunch time to buy food from takeaways.

The trust said a school which introduced a ‘locked gate’ policy at lunch time had seen a 15 per cent increase in meals take-up.

Jamie Oliver, speaking to the BBC, said an initial decline in take-up was unsurprising because ‘kids don’t like change’. He added: ‘We’ll see that negative turn into a positive.’ Children’s Minister Kevin Brennan said that where pupils had been involved and informed about the changes, they had been ‘more positive’ about the menus.

Mr Laws, however, said schools had been forced to switch from serving burgers to ‘lentil bakes’ too inflexibly and with too little education of pupils and parents.

The healthy food drive last year led to a rebellion at one school in Rotherham where mothers began running a junk food delivery service through the playground fence.

Julie Critchlow and Sam Walker said youngsters were not interested in overpriced ‘low-fat rubbish’.

Mr Laws warned that the Government was expected to miss targets for increasing school meal take-up by 2009.

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