Are you watching Jamie Oliver's school dinners?

[MunchedTooManyMarsLady]

Jamie's being given a run for his money. Loving it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I've already made a nuisance of myself by asking our parent-governer rep to raise the issue of healthy eating at the next meeting, so that it's on the agenda. No sane parent surely could object to it?

If everyone could do that, it's a start.

No Bundle, I think it's fab. Here's the one I sent:

Dear Ms Kelly

I'd like to know the government position on childrens' school dinners, following Jamie Oliver's campaign. Will any changes be made?

My son has a packed lunch at the moment since I am not happy with the standard of food offered in schools but I'd be interested to hear of
future plans.
Thank you.

Yours sincerely
WWW

No Bundle, I think it's very moderate and measured. I'm too angry to e-mail La Kelly just yet!

We do need to keep the momentum up - particularly in light of an impending general election . I live in Scotland where the situation with school dinners is slightly better because the Scottish Executive have put in an extra £65 million or so however what Jamie has highlighted is a NATIONAL disgrace and something we all should be kicking up a fuss about.
I thought the bit last night where JO showed the kids what mechanically recovered meat actually is and then offered them the chicken nuggets made out of it was genius.
I think Jamie deserves a knighthood. Honestly, he could have an easy life attracting no flak and instead he really does seem to want to act on his social conscience. I hope his efforts will be rewarded and that our kids will stop being fed a load of crap in their schools.

We should all email Ruth Kelly and be very explicit about what we think is the right thing for them to do. They are paying lip service to this problem and in reality, not much will change whilst private contractors still have their foot through the door.

In yesterday's Guardian

Mass-produced food\link{http://society.guardian.co.uk/publichealth/story/0,11098,1438777,00.html}

"The government, it seems, believes the giants of the catering industry are at the centre of the solution. Kelly says she wants "the food industry, caterers, nutritionists and food interest groups to work with the government to develop a new school trust to give independent support and advice to schools and parents to improve the standards of school meals".

But as Oliver said on Radio 4's The Food Programme, how independent can such a trust be if 40% of the food going into schools is already produced by the food companies to be represented on the trust? They have a vested financial interest in food made in their factories continuing to feed our children. And if you are a company as big as Scolarest, part of the Compass group plc, with an annual global turnover of £12bn (£2.6bn in the UK) and the biggest player in the school meals market, adjusting fat, sugar and salt levels in processed foods to some new "healthy" level is not very difficult."

Think this is going to be a real political issue with parents this election.

My MP, Debra Shipley, is sponsoring the Children's Food Bill and this, together with her other campaigns to outlaw junk food advertising on kids' TV, has guaranteed her my vote (despite the Govt's position on Iraq and Tony Blair's general sleaziness which would otherwise rule it out.)

Details of Debra Shipley's campaign on her website

hi wordsmith sorry to ask something totally irrelevant, but how old are your children? the reason i am asking is cos u said u are from dudley so i assume you had your kids at russells hall?if it was not too long ago i wanted to know what you thought of the place.