| |
The knives are out as two top chefs cook up rival plans to save school dinners.
Hot-headed Hell's Kitchen star Marco Pierre-White has turned up the heat on his long-running rivalry with school dinners champion Jamie Oliver.
Marco - who publicly roasted Jamie's campaign as a self-seeking publicity stunt - has presented his own plan to education secretary Michael Gove.
And now the celebrity chef, famed for promoting Knorr stock cubes and Bernard Matthews' products, wants to see professional cooks working with schools and the catering giants who supply them.
Jamie is credited with getting Turkey Twizzlers banned from school menus, lunches made healthy, dinner ladies trained and securing £280 million funding for a canteen and kitchen revolution.
SCHOOL MEALS NOW INCLUDE THE RIGHT COMBINATION OF ENERGY AND NUTRIENTS, WHILE PUPILS WHO EAT THEM ARE CONSUMING LESS SUGAR, SALT AND SATURATED FAT THAN BEFORE.
Michelin-starred Marco, seen as the culinary heir to giants such as Albert Roux, retired from cooking in 1999 to become a restaurateur and last year signed up as a spokesman for the Bernard Matthews farms.
He says: "I was raised in an environment where we tried to eat good food at affordable prices.
"It's all very well Jamie Oliver vilifying Turkey Twizzlers, but it wasn't Bernard Matthews who put them on the school dinners menu, was it? The caterers themselves did that. And anyway, Turkey Twizzlers have less fat in them than the average Cumberland sausage."
Marco's secret meeting with Michael Gove was revealed as Jamie launched part two of his school dinner manifesto for 2012.
Says Jamie: "I'm very worried. I've had a couple of meetings with the secretary of state for education and although I would love to believe that Mr Gove has school food high on his agenda, I've not heard anything so far worth celebrating.
"I'm sure he realises there are clear benefits to having good food in school: it improves a child's behaviour, willingness to learn and concentration at school, and that in turn helps children to achieve more and perform better.
"You would have to be an idiot to ignore all of the academic research that's been published to support these things, but still I don't see him or his ministerial colleagues in health actually doing anything to ensure that the improvements we have made are built upon. The opposite seems to be happening - and instead the progress we've made seems to be at risk."
Jamie's eight-point manifesto for 2012
- More money for school food.Replace the School Lunch Grant with a new School Food Premium which sees money paid to reward schools and head teachers who increase school meals take-up.
- All schools should be covered by the nutritional standards, which should be mandatory for academies and free schools.
- Make cooking classes compulsory, with pupils doing a minimum of 24 hours of practical lessons during every key stage.
- Ensure teachers are properly trained so they can teach cooking if and when it became a curriculum subject.
- Every school should grow some food itself.
- Improve school kitchens and canteens using capital funding to create on-site school kitchens, improved dining areas, multi-purpose spaces that would be suitable to teach practical cooking, and food-growing spaces.
- Ofsted inspections should assess the nutritional content of school food.
- Use the pupil premium to give poorer pupils access to healthy food.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
