Jamie's School Dinners — The Campaign

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Jamie's Manifesto

Jamie's new six-point plan to improve food for Britain's children

Make cooking and life skills classes compulsory for ALL kids so they learn about food and good eating habits while they’re young. Our kids need to be equipped to understand food, cook and shop on a budget, which are essential life skills.
Recruit and train new cookery teachers, otherwise the new entitlement to cookery lessons won’t be able to happen.
Empower heads to make every school a junk-free zone.
Educate parents and help them to understand the basics of family cooking and responsible nutrition.
Invest in dinner ladies with proper training and appropriate, paid hours to cook food and not just re-heat junk.
Commit to a ten-year strategic plan and fund a long-term public campaign to get people back onto a proper diet and empower/persuade (and possibly scare, if needed) the public into making better choices.

Jamie's Manifesto - Parents

PARENTS - Get parents on message.

I think many parents are unaware of how much junk their kids are actually eating and drinking. Many need to be guided to understand that if a chocolate bar, fizzy drink and bag of crisps are part of their kid's daily diet, they aren't getting the right kind of nutrition for proper growth and are going to face a load of serious health problems from early adulthood.

As well as the frightening rise in obesity there's a growing number of kids, no matter what shape or size, that simply aren't getting fed enough nutrients like iron, calcium and vitamins. It's having a huge effect on their brainpower, behaviour and ability to concentrate and learn at school.

Take iron: half of the country's teenage girls don't get enough, which affects IQ and probably means they're not doing as well at school as they should be.

This is literally a growing health problem which means that even if kids aren't already fat, more and more of them are becoming malnourished.

The government is spending £75 million to get us to stop smoking. We need the same kind of massive campaign to educate and scare, if necessary, families into knowing how important a good diet is to their kids' growth, health and future. If we don't get it right now pretty soon we're going to be a nation of overweight underachievers.

Find out more about Jamie's manifesto for:

www.jamieoliver.com/schooldinners/

Find out some basic facts about school dinners

Are you concerned about your child's school dinners? Do you know what they serve? Do you know who to talk to or even who's in charge?

Channel 4 has produced a fantastic downloadable action pack specifically for parents.

We've got lots of advice on finding out about the quality of your child's school meals, ways to start a campaign for change and some simple ways to improve your child's general diet.