Smash hit

Some children were furious when chips were removed from the menu, and brandished “Jamie, Go Home” placards in the playground. Many saw it as a war between the middle classes, who were delighted to be Olivered, and the traditional working classes who weren’t. At one point parents were pushing takeaway burgers through school railings to their offspring.

So huge was the resistance that take-up of school dinners fell by as much as 24%. At Ealdham primary in Greenwich the head teacher Sally Castle saw parents at the school gate with McDonald’s Happy Meals. “In the early days the children would be in tears and the parents were very angry and upset,” Castle said. At one point, school dinner numbers dipped so low that it looked as if Greenwich was going to have to give up its attempt at revolution. Oliver was despondent when he found kitchen bins filled with delicious dishes scorned by the children.

Then the corner was turned. Gurmel Singh-Kandola, Greenwich’s director of community services, says the numbers taking lunches began to rise again after parents were invited to school tasting sessions.

So what will Oliver find this time around? Will the chef be pleased by what he sees when he returns to Sands’s school? She thinks so. “Not everyone is eating the healthy school dinners, but a lot are and we are keeping up with that kind of food.”

Before Oliver, she provided 600 meals a day, most of them convenience foods. Now she is providing the same number of freshly cooked meals plus baguettes and salad boxes.

The picture is the same up and down the country in schools where healthy food has been introduced.

Crondall primary school in Hampshire used to serve 40 meals a day; now it is up to 130. The same is true of All Saints’ in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. At St Peter’s primary, in East Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, its headmaster, David Maddison, often invites parents for lunch.

“We have put lunch at the heart of the school day and we all sit down together,” he said. “It’s not about telling children what to eat, it’s giving them informed choices.”

Sands agrees. She believes that, like the Jesuits, you have to get the children young. “It’s reaching the little ones and establishing a habit of better eating,” she said.

“My book is not just about teaching children to cook, it’s about getting families to prepare meals together. Until the TV programme, I didn’t know that people didn’t cook at home. I’ve done the book because there is a desperate need out there.”

Through the Oliver series, Sands uncovered shocking ignorance about food. “I’ve seen so many kids that don’t even know a carrot from a potato,” she said.

Sands blames the stresses of modern life for our poor performance in the kitchen. The process of passing down food knowledge has been fractured by modern life. “Everybody is too busy to hand down skills now,” she said.

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