Alistair Arkley column

Feb 14 2007 By Alistair Arkley, The Journal

It's hard to turn on your TV nowadays without seeing the appealing face of Jamie Oliver - in his admirable work in offering opportunities to young people from troubled backgrounds or those adverts for a certain supermarket.

Let me say here and now that I have great deal of time for Jamie, especially the way he used his celebrity chef status to turn the spotlight on the shocking decline in the standard of school meals caused by the move away from "real" freshly prepared food to the pre-prepared "Turkey Twizzler-style" of catering.

He certainly had ministers rushing to bask in his reflected glory with pledges that there would be £220m made available to improve the quality of school meals and a further £60m to set up the Schools Food Trust to advise schools - and parents - on healthier eating.

From last autumn there has been a ban on crisps, chocolate, fizzy drinks and so-called "low quality" meat … which I assume includes the dread Twizzlers. In September this year there will be further rules on what can and cannot be sold from school tuck shops and vending machines and also in the pipeline is the requirement for schools to stipulate the vitamin contents of their meals.

All excellent stuff and a tribute to Jamie Oliver and the power of television.

Yet I can't help but wonder if the junk food culture will really be that easy to dislodge. I say that as a result of the experience of one of my business colleagues when his son's school decided to make the switch from the Twizzlers to healthier foods such as salads.

Now I have a direct interest in the catering business in my role as chairman of Steelite International, one of the country's major manufacturers of tableware and crockery, based in the Potteries and supplying markets right across Europe and the US. I was recently hearing from one of my senior colleagues at the company, who had been pleased to learn that his son's school was responding to the "real food" agenda, but quickly found it wasn't just a simple case of changing the menus.

That's because the way the school had been serving the meals, and the utensils it had been using, was linked to the fast food culture … in other words plastic trays, complete with plastic cutlery, moulded specifically to house the Twizzlers and similar products.

Apparently the prospect of a move to healthy dishes such as salads caused some consternation because there simply wasn't enough room for everything on the trays - and the concept of "formal" eating, in other words using a plate and a proper knife and fork, was something beyond comprehension!

There's a serious point. How on earth can we hope to persuade young people to turn away from the junk food mentality when it is even ingrained in the way schools provide their meals?

* Alistair Arkley is chairman of the Northern Business Forum and chairman of New Century Inns.