‘Camden should take over from Scolarest when contract expires’

JAMIE Oliver has urged Camden Council to seize control of its heavily criticised school dinner service when the current contract with catering giant Scolarest runs out next year.
Mr Oliver, who lives in Primrose Hill and is leading a national campaign to improve school dinners, said a “council-led or independently-run service has real emotion behind it,” when he spoke at the Royal College of Physicians in St Andrew’s Place, Regent’s Park, on Monday night.
In an episode of his show Jamie’s School Dinners, broadcast last Wednesday on Channel 4, he clashed with Scolarest’s managing director Tony Sanders over the inclusion of heavily processed turkey twizzlers in dinners served to children.
And speaking after Monday’s two-hour debate, he told the New Journal: “Council-led services are better and in an ideal world private firms shouldn’t be allowed to feed our kids like animals, but in the real world we are stuck with them.
“To be fair to Scolarest, they have removed turkey twizzlers from their menus and are trying to make them healthier – they are doing that off their own back and I congratulate them for that.”
More than 300 food campaigners including dinner ladies, academics, farmers and Camden parents travelled from all over the country to attend the debate, with food writer Felicity Lawrence and nutrition experts Claire Alison and Professor Tim Lang also taking the stage.
Prof Lang, who backs the introduction of tougher nutrition standards, added: “Government needs to act as government. There seems to a fear of being seen as the nanny state, but they just need to do the job they are elected to do.”
TV advertising, the low status of dinner ladies, a lack of school time for cooking lessons and the food industry’s attempts to cut corners were all also blamed for the state of children’s food in Britain.
Prof Lang said: “In one sense, solving the problem is easy: we just need to change everything.”