Hilarie: Jamie gives us all food for thought

Oct 4 2008 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

JAMIE OLIVER has a gift for addressing the blindingly obvious problems that the rest of us have been ignoring.

Like school dinners.

We all knew that children were choosing chips every day and filling up on chocolate bars from the school vending machines. But, for some reason, we simply accepted this state of affairs as if nothing could be done.

Even when Firstborn, in his first term at infant school, developed a distinctly pudgy waistline (he LOVED the cook’s sponge pudding and custard, as well as chips) our solution was to remove him from dinners and give him sandwiches. We did not complain to the school or the education authority.

At school events I always used to wince at the sale of DayGlo pop (two hours of hyperactive behaviour guaranteed in every carton), the 10p packets of crisps and ghastly multi-coloured penny sweets (more free hyperactivity).

And yet not once did I voice my protest to the head teacher or PTA. I simply restricted the Offspring’s intake and pointed them in the direction of the ‘healthier’ chocolate biscuits and flapjacks.

And then along came Jamie and out went chips, Turkey Twizzlers and burgers. In came pasta bars, salads and an overnight revolution in school dinners. One man with a mission achieved a total change in institutionalised eating.

It might have stuck in the gullets of the feckless burger munchers but I’m not sure there was a lot of sympathy for mothers who think it’s OK to push takeaways through the school railings at their children.

And now Jamie’s at it again, with a campaign to get ordinary families into the kitchen and around the dining table. He’s chosen Rotherham for the launch because that’s where parents on the Rawmarsh estate pushed the burgers through the bars.

Right from the start, Jamie’s Ministry of Food, which began this week on Channel 4, offered the sort of revelatory observations we’ve come to expect.

In one scene he stood in the food technology room of a secondary school looking at the kitchen ranges and wondering why no-one was using them after school hours.

“People should be in here learning to cook,” he says.

And he’s absolutely right.

I can think of many projects less deserving of funding than teaching the art of cooking. In the long term it could save the NHS a fortune.