TV chef attacks mealy-mouthed politicians

Jamie Oliver has accused the government of being mealy-mouthed over his campaign to promote healthier school dinners.

10:56 19 March 2005

Jamie Oliver has accused the government of being mealy-mouthed over his campaign to promote healthier school dinners.

The TV chef has given politicians a roasting over their failure to improve children's food and says they do not have the appetite to improve school dinners.

Following his reality TV show, Jamie's School Dinners, Oliver has launched a petition calling on the government to double the amount of money spent on providing children's lunches.

"I don't think the government will be prepared to pay unless parents make it uncomfortable for them not to," Oliver told the Daily Mirror.

"In Gordon Brown's budget, there was nothing remotely connected to school dinners. We tried to get some feedback from the Conservatives on their position but I was shocked by the lack of response."

The Mirror, which is jointly running Oliver's Feed Me Better campaign, claims that 93,000 people have now signed his petition.

The newspaper says that 10,000 people alone added their names to it after watching the final episode of Oliver's Channel 4 show last Wednesday.

The series saw Oliver transforming school dinners in 60 schools across Greenwich and south east London by banning junk food and helping retrain dinner ladies to cook fresh produce.