Jamie's dinners: What children think about healthier school meals

Day two of the autumn term, and in the crowded canteen of a suburban Leicester comprehensive, the school's new healthy lunch menu isn't going down well.

"It's nasty, cold and horrible," snorts 13-year-old Rhiann Webster, shoving aside a plate strewn with a half-eaten jacket potato and shavings of orange cheese. "They're going to lose money. Everyone will switch to packed lunches!"

New arrival Daniel Timson, 11, is equally unimpressed. "The meat's too soft - it's disgusting!" he exclaims, jabbing the remains of his pork curry with a fork. "We had chips and pizza at my old school. I'm not going to eat this again."

As Jamie Oliver meets the press today for a preview of a one-off follow-up to his Bafta-winning series Jamie's School Dinners, scenes like these are doubtless being played out in hundreds of schools around the UK. After months of consultation by ministers, this week saw the nationwide introduction of a new set of strict nutritional standards for school food - inspired by the hugely influential "Feed Me Better" campaign that arose out of Oliver's hit Channel 4 documentary.

The sweeping regulations ban all sales of fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate on school premises, including in vending machines, and allow deep-fried items like chips to be served at lunchtimes no more than twice a week. Out, too, go hot dogs, burgers and Oliver's bête-noire, Turkey Twizzlers, to be replaced by high-quality meats, oily fish and at least two daily portions of fruit and veg.

Though Tony Blair insists the Government has long planned to tighten school nutritional standards, this radical decision to eschew the "multiple-choice" menus and Coke and Mars Bars tuck-shops of recent years is, in no small part, down to Oliver.

Announced in May by the Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, and backed by a £280m fund, the new rules are based on recommendations by the School Meals Review Panel and the School Food Trust - both launched in the wake of a petition of 271,677 signatures that the TV chef delivered to Downing Street in March last year.

Father-of-two Oliver's passionate pursuit of healthier school menus saw him widely hailed as a latter-day philanthropist. But alongside the plaudits came accusations that his focus on the worst examples of canteen junk food risked so undermining public confidence in school meals that parents would simply boycott them - thus threatening the survival of a service which provides the only square meal of the day for many poorer children.

For a while, statistics seemed to support this. Six months after Jamie's School Dinners, the Local Authority Catering Association revealed that take-up of school meals had plummeted by 9 per cent. Oddly, Oliver was criticised as much for the positive effect he was having on school kitchens as for the damage he had done. Parents, it seemed, were as likely to stop paying for canteen dinners because children complained they could no longer buy chicken nuggets as they were over concerns about poor nutritional standards.

But evidence was soon gathering about the positive impact of Oliver's campaign. At one of the schools chosen to try out "Jamie menus" in a pilot last autumn, Capel Primary near Tonbridge, Kent, take-up of hot meals more than doubled as fatty foods were replaced with fresh salmon pie and chilli beef fajitas.

In his new film, Jamie's Return to School Dinners, to be shown a week on Monday (18 September), Oliver revisits the subject to find out how things have changed since last year's series. Among his more alarming discoveries is the fact that many primary schools no longer have kitchens - a legacy of the early Eighties, when governing bodies were given responsibility for running their own catering services, and many decided to outsource cooked meals or stop serving them.

Oliver's findings seem uncannily attuned to this week's announcement by the Education Secretary of measures - backed by a further £240m - to subsidise the new healthy eating regime in schools up to 2011. Among investments will be £2m to establish training kitchens for staff, and a fund for building kitchens.

For his film, Oliver visited Lincolnshire, where fewer than a third of the 287 primaries serve hot meals, despite concerted efforts by the local education authority to promote partnerships, wherever possible, with nearby secondary schools. The programme follows his progress as he sets up a model arrangement between two of these, Theddlethorpe Primary School, near Mablethorpe, and Saltfleetby Primary School, near Louth, and a local pub, the King's Head.

Fiona Gately, who runs the "Feed Me Better" campaign, says Oliver's aim is to demonstrate how the government grants allotted to schools to help them improve meals can be used constructively - even by those with no cooking facilities. Without cash to set up kitchens from scratch, he suggests they join forces with catering providers through organisations such as The Pub is the Hub, launched in 2001 to promote economic partnerships in rural communities.

As Oliver explains in the film: "In Lincolnshire, within three or four miles you've got a school and a local pub or a hotel and a farmer or food producer. Between the three of them, we can solve the problem of hot meals in the county."

Parmjit Dhanda, junior children's minister, denies this week's announcement was inspired by Oliver's latest findings. Asked about the new emphasis on the importance of reinstating kitchens in some schools, he says: "I haven't seen Jamie's programme, but I've been working for some time on these plans."

Dhanda says he hopes funding pledged to ensure every child has a right to learn to cook will give them skills they can take home and, if necessary, pass on to parents. He adds: "These measures are not just about food on the plate. They're about children reaching 16 with a new life skill."

Though funding provided so far to help schools introduce the new standards falls far short of the £1 a meal demanded by Oliver's supporters (councils have only to ensure the risible 37p previously spent on lunches in some primaries rises to 50p, with 60p spent on all secondary pupils), the chef himself is said to be broadly satisfied with the Government's response - for now. But he has concerns.

"He's very pleased about the standards," says Ms Gately, "but he's concerned that kids can still bring in lunchboxes. How do you control what's in them? One of his key messages is that parents need to engage with this: if not they're going to be partly responsible for the fact their children aren't getting the right nutrition."

While Oliver may welcome the regulations, not everyone is so enamoured. David Tuck, vice-president of the National Association of Head Teachers, says that some members feel ministers have played into a perception fostered by the "Feed Me Better" campaign that all school canteens were equally in need of overhaul.

"The feedback I've had is that the Jamie Oliver stuff didn't reflect the situation in most schools," he says. "In my own, we'd gone down the route of salad bars already, and the majority of schools locally haven't been dishing out chocolate sponges or burgers."

He concedes some head teachers' reservations are more prosaic: "There are worries about the loss of vending machines in some secondary schools, which used to generate a high proportion of their revenues."

But how are the changes being received by those intended to benefit from them? At City of Leicester College, Rosie Walton, 11, a hardened school dinner refusenik, has a Tupperware lunchbox crammed with chocolate biscuits and white bread sandwiches.

"I had macaroni cheese on induction day and it was horrible," she grimaces, crunching through a bag of cheese and onion crisps.

So who is to blame for turning the children off hot meals? Surely not Jamie....

"No," says Aaminah Taylor, 12. "When you look at the food he makes it seems so nice, but when you come to school it's crap."

Today's main course hardly looks like the stuff of culinary revolutions. But while the curry resembles a grey-green slop, it tastes pleasantly creamy. As he polishes his off, Jordan Johnson, 11, declares: "It's not chips, but it's all right."

Future menus look promising, with salmon and broccoli pasta, red dragon pie, and cheese and pepper quiche up for grabs within the fortnight. And the school is promoting its new approach with complimentary food tastings; regular theme days celebrating global cuisine; and monthly handouts of free vegetable sticks at lunchtime.

As she removes last year's price list from its laminated mount (among the late, lamented items are "speedy snacks" including burgers in baps, hot dogs and, yes, Turkey Twizzlers), catering manager Keeley Monk reflects on today's struggle.

"It's been dreadful - they've bought jacket potatoes and salads, but not main meals," she sighs. Then her eyes flare with something of the Dunkirk spirit: "We're in it for the long haul. They'll come round in time."

New rules

What the new standards say:

Each child to be served at least two portions of fruit and vegetables per day.

Meat, fish and other non-dairy source of protein to be available every day.

"Economy burgers" banned. Other manufactured meat products only allowed occasionally - and provided they meet minimum statutory meat content levels.

Bread to be served with all meals, along with another starchy food (e.g. pasta).

A maximum of two deep-fried items to be served each week.

Milk and/or other dairy products to be provided on daily basis.

Only drinks permitted are water, milk, tea, coffee, low-calorie hot chocolate, pure fruit juice, yoghurt/milk drinks with less than 5 per cent fat.

Free, fresh drinking water available at all times - without need to go to toilet.

Ban on sales of confectionery, salt and savoury snacks other than nuts or seeds. JM