Profile SUNDAY TIMES BETTER SCHOOL MEALS CAMPAIGN Fighting for the same cause? w 22
A national campaign to call for ‘better school meals’ might instil horror in the minds of some school caterers, but the Sunday Times argues that they have the same goal: to encourage more children to have school meals
hen Jamie Oliver took on the school meals agenda in 2005 he wasn’t wholly welcomed. Now, Jamie is being joined by Raymond Blanc, Gary Rhodes, Anton Mossiman, Annabel Karmel, Rachel Khoo, Bruno Loubet and Britain’s youngest head chef Luke Thomas to talk school food.
Some of the UK’s best-known chefs and food writers – not to mention 20 headteachers – have written a letter, published in the Sunday Times, ‘expressing
June 2013
concern’ about poor school meals take-up. They are supporting the Sunday Times Better School Meals campaign, launched last month, which “aims to improve school dinners and increase the number of children who eat them”. The campaign also encourages children to learn to cook at school. You don’t have to look too deep to see that the campaign is backed by John Vincent and Henry Dimbleby and runs just as the pair prepare to publish their School Food Plan.
The question is: how supportive is the campaign of school caterers? My ears initially pricked when I heard that the campaign was titled ‘Better School Meals’, which sounds as though it is calling for
Words MORAG LYALL
improvements in the meals themselves, rather than wanting to help to increase take-up. However, an online video of Michelin-starred chef Angela Hartnett does actually mention how great her meals were at school.
“We’ve
placed the emphasis of our
editorial on the uptake of school meals”
“I was very fortunate to have had amazing school dinners,” she said. “There was no fear of eating at school and you always knew you were going to have a lovely meal.” Perhaps the name of the campaign can be ignored. I spoke to Ben Whitelaw, communities editor at the Times, who is working on the campaign and he stressed that the newspaper is fi ghting the same cause as school caterers. “We’ve placed the emphasis of our editorial on the uptake of school meals and acknowledged that it’s very hard to produce quality food day in, day out when only 40% of pupils nationally take them,” he said. “In that sense, we’re saying there’s a need to educate parents about the cost and health implications of packed lunches, which aren’t as cheap or as healthy as many think, and for schools to take responsibility for making school meals more appealing for parents and children.”
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