Food for Life Partnership

• School dinner revolution
• Apr - Jun 2009
• Jan - Mar 2009
• Oct - Dec 2008

School dinner revolution

4 January 2010

Sheila Dillon is joined by guests including Jeanette Orrey, school meals advisor to the Food for Life Partnership to discuss the current state of school food. Jeanette explains that school food is more than school dinners now, it is also about food education. Involving children, parents and the local community in growing, cooking and visiting farms is crucial to create a better food culture, which is what the Food for Life Partnership is working towards in more than 1,500 schools now.

Jeanette also talks about the new Food for Life Partnership School Cooks Network, which is a network of 14 school cooks from across England, who will support other school cooks in finding ways of improving the quality of school dinners, using fresh, local and organic produce while working within tiny budgets.

Jo Jones, cook at Food for Life Partnership Gold school, St Peter’s Primary School in Shropshire says:
“It is a real buzz knowing that we are actually educating children and parents [about food]. I help run the after school cookery club and I just love it when children are so proud that they made something and come back the next day and say ‘I really enjoyed that, I will make it again at the weekend.’ Our school is now a hub in the community, we promote ourselves to other schools in the area, who want to be Partnership schools. Our children are having regular farm visits, we've got a school garden established where the children are growing their own food, which we then serve at lunchtime, our school dinners are as healthy as they can be, we have a cookery club established and really the children just know all about food and where their food comes from. Food for Life Partnership is a big part of my life now, as I know it is with a lot of the other ladies. And I think, once you start something like this you just want to keep going and the more you put in, the more you get out.”

Debbie Higham, headteacher at The Vine Primary School, a Food for Life Partnership flagship school said:
“What you feed children makes a difference to their learning…If I was really brave, I would say there is no such thing as a packed lunch in this school, because I just see the difference between what we provide from the school kitchen – free range eggs, outdoor-reared pork, Freedom Food chicken – and the packed lunches, a lot of them are really impoverished, and then I look at the children and I just know which child is going to have a better attitude to their learning that afternoon.”

BBC Radio 4 Food Programme, 3 Jan and 4 Jan 2009
Listen again