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Home | Do Something! | The Campaign | Jamie Speaks | Food Most Fowl | Porridge To Pizza | Find Out More
Return to Jamie's School Dinners
September 18 2006
Last year Jamie Oliver tackled the shameful state of school dinners in one of the most acclaimed TV series ever.
Kids were eating piles of processed junk and recoiled at the sight of fresh vegetables. And the terrible diet was leading to a health time-bomb, with soaring rates of obesity and hugely increased risks of heart disease and other life-threatening conditions for Britain's children.
So Jamie took over school meals in Greenwich and tried to persuade the Government to improve standards. With dinner lady Nora Sands he showed that kids could be fed fresh, nutritious meals. And after a huge campaign, newspaper headlines and delivering a 300,000-signature petition, Tony Blair agreed to set new standards for school meals, and committed £280 million for proper ingredients, equipment and training.
A year on, Jamie wanted to go back to see how much better things were. Surely with all that money and new guidelines, the dinner ladies' lives would be much easier and the kids would be happily tucking into healthy grub?
But as he starts to unravel the finances and see the reality of the changes through the eyes of dinner ladies, kids and parents, Jamie begins to realise that they may have won the battle, but there is still a war to be fought.
Find out what happened in the webchat with Jamie that took place on 10 March 2005.
Familiarise yourself with the arguments and watch clips of Channel 4's live event.
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.
Share your thoughts, experiences and ideas in the forum.
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