The truth about school dinners: what happened when Jamie went home

At CDB, we love Jamie Oliver. We have blogged about the cheeky chappy once or twice, :-) and we applaud how he has mastered his own brand, kept his authenticity, and utilised combinations of old media and new media to devastating effect.

If you were a big business and were struggling to reinvent yourself - I would suggest having a think about Jamie, would not be a bad idea.

anyway, back to business. In a big article in the Observer Food Monthly. Jay Rayner asks It's 16 months since the TV chef stormed through Britain's school kitchens and declared war on the Turkey Twizzler. So are our children now eating healthier foods?

Loads and loads of good stuff in here. It seems there was already a movement going on. But Jamie harnessed the power and passion of a diverse community.

However lets dive in.

On the other side of the kitchen the five-year-olds are also rampaging through their lunch. As I am talking to them, Terrence, all short-cropped hair and bright eyes, looks up at me and grins. The plate in front of him is completely clean. Sticking out of his mouth is a curly lettuce leaf.

As an image of what has happened to school meals in this country since a charismatic television chef decided to use the power of his celebrity to bring about significant social change, it really can't be bettered.

And yet it tells only a part of the story. The past 16 months have seen a revolution in the provision of school meals across England and Wales, but with varying degrees of success. For every Mildmay and Meadgate - for every Terrence chewing on a lettuce leaf - there is somewhere else doing the bare minimum. 'We are at the beginning of huge change,' says Peter Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association, which was pushing for improvement through its Food for Life campaign before Jamie even took to our screens

You know there's no point tryin' 'cause you're never goin to change a god damn thing! Right? No wrong.

And while there are many in the field who want credit for the good things they were doing before Jamie's School Dinners caught the public imagination - often with justification - it is worth recalling exactly what effect that TV show had. First there was the sound of the penny dropping, as Jamie discovered the appalling rubbish that was being served in schools across the London Borough of Greenwich - and, by association to kids across the country. We saw the way the kids turned against his new healthy menus of slow-cooked balsamic beef stew and hot and kickin' chicken, and how he hid in a cupboard to weep tears of frustration. But eventually everything started to come right. Within weeks the mass caterer Scolarest had announced Turkey Twizzlers were coming off the menu. 'We do recognise customers' concerns about the product,' the company said. 'We have embarked on a long programme to take off as much processed food as possible.'

But what really pushed events on was Oliver's Feed Me Better campaign. He launched a petition with the aim of getting 10,000 signatures. Four days after the final episode aired, in March 2005, he delivered it to Downing Street. It held 271,677 signatures. Tony Blair promised to take action and, within weeks, the new education secretary, Ruth Kelly, announced that an extra £235m would be invested in improving meals over the next three years. A School Meals Review Panel would assess the state of the current service

Amen to that....

So the politicians, government agencies could not see what Jamie saw; that feediing our kids rubbish on a daily basis was contributing significantly to their poor-health, and was definitely not providing their brains and bodies with the necessary fuel to learn properly. And act upon it!!!! Duurh

I mean whats the cost ratio of healthy salad say vs. tons of drugs for asthma? and before anyone wants to take a pop at me. Go back and watch the series. :-)

Its why big organisations are bad, and will become increasingly unneccessary in world which will be required to be flexibile, to be fleet of foot and agile.

And what are governments primary duty? To look after the welfare of its people. hmmmmmm

Anyway £15m went on setting up the School Food Trust. Last month The Trust announced a new set of regulatory standards with a date for implementation in September. These are; an end to processed items, crisps, fizzy drinks and confectionery; a minimum of two portions of fruit and vegetables with every meal; no more than two fried items a week. The Trust also said that schools would have to meet even more stringent nutritional standards by 2008. In keeping with Oliver's call for 'half a quid a kid' the government recommended a minimum spend on ingredients of 50p for primary school children and 60p in secondaries.

However Dame Suzi Leather chair of the School Food Trust said

I don't think 50p is enough. We costed it when I was on the School Meals Review Panel and concluded that, to deliver the required standards, it has to be 70p in primary schools and 80p in secondaries.

But not everyone gets it. As Jay Rayner found out

But when I asked Carl Baker of Lincolnshire County Council whether I could see some of the menus, he said they didn't have them, and that they belonged to school catering managers who were 'possessive' about their meal plans. 'It's exactly the same as asking Gordon Ramsay or Jamie Oliver for their recipes, isn't it? They wouldn't give them to you.' Well no, Carl, it isn't. For a start Jamie and Gordon post their menus outside their restaurants. And declaring a school meal menu confidential in the current climate is nothing short of bizarre.

But how did it all manage to go so wrong?

To truly understand the Jamie Oliver effect, we have to understand why we needed him in the first place. And to do that we have to go back over 100 years, to the Boer War. Since the late 19th century there had been a polite discussion within political circles about the state's responsibility for the health of the poor. The Boer War, which started in 1899, concentrated minds on the subject marvellously: the ordinary troops, drawn from the working classes, were so undernourished they were lousy at fighting. Out of that came a growing commitment to the idea of food provision as a benefit to public health. In 1906 local authorities were given the right to introduce school meals if they so wished, which was taken up most enthusiastically by the city of Bradford. In the Butler Act of 1944 the provision of school meals was finally made mandatory.

And so it remained until 1980, when the Thatcher government's first education act made the provision of school meals discretionary, dumped all nutritional standards and removed the notion of a fixed price. At least 12 local authorities - including Lincolnshire - immediately gave up altogether, retreating to providing only packed lunches to those entitled to free meals, the statutory minimum. Eight years later, the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering - the requirement that all contracts for local services be given to the most competitively priced bidder - guaranteed that the quality of school meals collapsed. 'We got into this situation because we were following what the kids wanted,' says Kevin McKay, of the Local Authorities Caterers Association (LACA). 'And we did that because we were now working as a commercial interest.'

Government in reactionary mode? No honest guv' I was finking 'bout doin' this for ages

Towards the end of 2004 the prime minister's policy unit at Downing Street got wind of the new series Jamie Oliver was shooting in Greenwich, and quickly realised how politically damaging it would be if it was seen to do nothing. Shortly before Christmas 2004 Ruth Kelly succeeded Charles Clarke as Education Secretary. According to insiders she startled DfES officials when, on her first day in the job, she listed school meals as among her six priorities. It had never been a priority before. Jamie's School Dinners wasn't even on air, and already it was having an impact.

As the journal of the British Medical Association later said, 'Jamie Oliver has done more for the public health of children than a corduroy army of public health officials.' Dame Suzi Leather agrees, 'If the programme hadn't gone out we wouldn't be where we are today.'

Lots of debate of where ultimately where blame lies. I think in the end it is at the door of the government. I have said it before - but a healthy nation, that eats well, will cost the state and therefore us less.

Get healthy food back on the menu and junk food off it.

And to make the point, well pointier. UK Obesity Rates in Children and Junk Food

A new study shows that thousands of inactive and obese UK children are at risk of disease. Around 10 per cent of UK children now diagnosed as overweight, and between 2 and 3 per cent as obese. Doctors are struggling to see what can be done to shift an entire generation's eating habits.

And Tackling Obesity in England

Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, told Parliament today that the prevalence of obesity in England had tripled over the last 20 years and continues to rise. Most adults in England are now overweight, and one in five is obese.

Producing the first authoritative estimates of the costs and consequences of obesity in England, Sir John estimated that obesity accounted for 18 million days of sickness absence and 30,000 premature deaths in 1998. On average, each person whose death could be attributed to obesity lost nine years of life. Treating obesity costs the NHS at least £? billion a year. The wider costs to the economy in lower productivity and lost output could be a further £2 billion each year.

Sir John commented

Nearly two thirds of men and over half of women in England are now overweight or obese. And the problem here is increasing faster than in most other European countries. If prevalence continues to rise at the current rate, more than one in four adults will be obese by 2010. This would significantly increase the incidence of associated diseases, such as coronary heart disease, and would cost the economy over £3.5 billion a year by that date.

There are no easy solutions to the problem but progress is possible. There is scope to do more to promote healthier lifestyles and improve NHS services for the increasing number of people whose health is at risk from excess weight

But to gently remind you Jamie, enabled critical mass - DIGITALLY. But it is and was real. The collective of the many voices is always more powerful, that a single cry in the dark.

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