Jamie Oliver and School Dinners

I witnessed the decline of food popularity in my school, so it doesn't surprise me that Jamie Oliver's School Dinners campaign is failing. I'm glad its failing. He single-handedly orchestrated the demise of quality food provided in schools. Seven years ago I could get three sausages, a plate of chips and beans for a pound-fifty. It was tasty as you like and it went down perfectly at lunch time before the afternoon's lessons. By the end of my secondary school career I couldn't get anything resembling a plate of food for less than three quid. It was an outrage, certainly not in line with the rising cost of produce or inflation. So what went wrong? Jamie Oliver - that's what went wrong. People are aware, intelligent, and told, enough to know what is good for you and what is bad. No-one in Britain is making uninformed choices about food. OK, if there was no alternative to the less-healthy foods, provide one. However, by limiting pupils' choice to one or two tasteless meals, you are withdrawing all responsibility, frustrating the pupils, and discouraging everyone from eating a hearty lunch. As the recent Ofsted report has shown, kids are finding ways to overcome their schools' lack of provision which, in turn, means that cafeterias nationwide are being forced to raise their prices to break even. And so the multiplier effect begins: less kids want lunch, the price goes up, less kids want lunch, etc. etc. This article in the Guardian points out that "even Jamie Oliver's menus has failed to make it cool to eat in school". Well, in case this reporter hasn't realised, Jamie Oliver is in no way "cool", nor does he possess the persuasion skills he needs to convince the conscious among us that he has succeeded with his silly little campaign. I'm sure however, the truism of failure has never, or will ever, cross his mind.