Naked Chef enjoys a taste of political power

Key points

• Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver turns around government policy on school meals

• PM, Education Secretary promise action after chef's TV series shocks nation

• Health groups furious at government neglect of children’s diet before show

Key quote

"I do think it is alarming that it takes a celebrity to come along and embarrass the government" - Joanna Blythman, food writer

Story in full HE prefers a Vespa scooter to a ministerial Rover and a pair of jeans to a pinstripe suit. Yet Jamie Oliver yesterday showed his considerable political power as the government revealed plans to shake up school dinners, following the outcry triggered by the celebrity chef’s television series.

Five weeks ago Jamie Oliver was best known for an annoying series of Sainsbury adverts and for introducing the term "pukka tucka" into the English language. Today he is feted by politicians, lionised in newspaper editorials and adored by the nation’s headteachers. With just a camera crew and his resilient sense of pluck, Jamie Oliver has single-handedly dragged the issue of school dinners out of the pages of joke books and highlighted them as a disturbing national disgrace.

Using the recent Channel Four TV series Jamie’s School Dinners as a springboard, Mr Oliver launched Feed Me Better, a national campaign to strip junk food out of school canteens and replace it with fresh, healthy produce. The campaign petition has already attracted over 165,000 signatures, including 116 MPs and has a dedicated website which encourages pupils to write to their MPs and demand better food.

"It is incredible what he has achieved," said Dale Dewesbury, manager of Restaurant Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles Hotel. "He has risen so much in my estimation. No one mentioned school meals before or at least no-one listened. That’s changed. Every politician has to have an opinion on the issue now."

The Naked Chef, it seems, has been replaced by The Ambitious Politician, a strident campaigner who has learned from Bob Geldof the power of an expletive-laden soundbite. Last week he described Gordon Brown’s budget as "bulls**t" for its failure to mention school dinners. This week, however, he discovered that children across England and Wales would now reap the rewards of his hard work.

At the weekend the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, praised Mr Oliver’s television series as "remarkable" and promised a package of measures to promote healthier school meals. In the TV series Mr Oliver revealed that the average cost of a child’s school dinner was just 37p - half the price of a prisoner’s meal - and consisted largely of reheated processed food with a disturbing absence of fresh fruit or vegetables.

Yesterday Ruth Kelly, the education secretary, committed the government to "no more cheap burgers and sausages" and to raising the nutritional standards of school meals, with an investment programme in kitchen facilities and equipment and the retraining of catering staff. A new School Meals Trust will be set up to assist headteachers, parents and school governors to raise standards, while OFSTED, the education standards watchdog in England, will be given a new role to inspect and report on the quality of school meals, the cost of which will rise to 50p.

Jamie Oliver described himself as "really pleased" with the government’s steps but he insisted he would be scrutinising the details.

"I will be looking at how it will be structured," he said. "If changes are made it will only be a matter of months before British health, education and farming could be affected for the better. It could be one of the biggest food revolutions that England has ever seen."

The genesis of Jamie Oliver’s social conscience is tied to his move from BBC to Channel Four. He was discovered in 1998 during the filming of a documentary about the River Caf, where he worked as a charismatic sous-chef. He went on to film three series of The Naked Chef in which his relaxed and "matey" style of presenting won him a legion of fans.

The BBC, however, became uncomfortable with the advertising deal he signed with Sainsbury’s in 2000, which appeared to mirror the TV programme. After his third series Mr Oliver then moved to Channel 4 where he developed Jamie’s Kitchen to follow the progress of his new charity, Cheeky Chops.

He successfully turned 15 disadvantaged and unemployed youths into a team of confident chefs with whom he opened his own restaurant, Fifteen, now a favourite of celebrities such as Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.

As a father of two little girls, Mr Oliver was concerned about the diet of Britain’s school children and devised Jamie’s School Dinners in which he attempted to turn around the meals prepared in schools in the London borough of Greenwich. What he discovered, and subsequently broadcast, shocked British viewers.

When asked what he ate, one boy replied: "Chips, burgers, fish fingers - anything you can cook in grease." A young girl summed up her entire generation when she explained: "We don’t like being healthy." Many pupils could not recognise a leek, a carrot or an onion and instead gorged themselves on a daily diet of chips, burgers and pizza.

The health consequence of such a diet was brought home by a paediatric dietician who explained that they had referrals from children as young as five and cases of eight-year-olds vomiting "semi-formed faeces" because their digestive tracts were literally unable to stomach their diets.

The food, however, which initially turned the pupils’ stomachs was vegetables. One boy refused to eat a vegetable dish even after Jamie Oliver offered him 100. The problem was that since school dinners had been contracted out to private firms, dinner ladies no longer cooked but instead heated up pre-packaged and processed food.

The average cost of a school meal was revealed to be just 37p, a third of what countries such as France or Italy spend on their school meals. Yesterday it was also revealed that the army spends more on feeding its dogs, whose average meal costs 50p per portion.

Mr Oliver sought inspiration from Scotland, whose school dinner system he described as "light years ahead" of the rest of the UK. Hungry for Success, the Scottish Executive’s 63.5 million scheme, which was launched last year, urges local councils to restrict food such as chips and garlic bread to twice a week. Glasgow, Scotland’s largest local authority, now gives its pupils free milk and every child aged three to 12 gets fresh fruit five times a week.

At first, Oliver’s attempt to switch chips and pizza for healthier dishes - such as super vegetable noodles and lemon-roasted chicken with sweet tomato pasta - resulted in protests from both pupils and parents and an increase in packed lunches laden with chocolate and crisps. However, his retraining of school kitchen staff and persistence with a healthier menu paid remarkable dividends in terms of health and behaviour.

In the opinion of Joanna Blythman, a food writer and author of The Food Our Children Eat, Oliver has achieved more in a few weeks than many dedicated organisations have over the past 20 years.

"That’s not a good thing. I do think it is alarming that it takes a celebrity to come along and embarrass the government when organisations such as the School Nutritional Action Group and the Soil Association have been campaigning on the very same issues for over 20 years," she said.

Janice Measor, however, believes Jamie Oliver deserves nothing less than a knighthood. As part of the programme he visited Mrs Measor, who with her husband, Les, has nine children, and turned around the family’s diet from junk food to salads. "Schools and governors have been battling for years to change school meals but Jamie has really brought it to the fore," said Mrs Measor.

Jamie Oliver’s campaign website is www.feedmebetter.com