Cook who put health on the table

THE ARRIVAL of a new cook in January has completely transformed school dinners at Vale of Berkeley College.

A recent spate of media scrutiny has revealed that the UK has a serious problem with school dinners.

Thanks to initiatives led by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, the nation is waking up to the fact that its students are suffering significant adverse health effects as a result of being served heavily processed foods high in fat, sugar and additives.

Long before the series Jamie's School Dinners was aired on Channel 4, however, headmaster Aiden Farrell of Vale of Berkeley College was aware that something had to be done about school dinners.

In January this year, he hired Hilary Smith to take over the college's kitchens, and the results have been impressive.

Hilary Smith is a local caterer strongly committed to providing wholesome meals prepared from scratch. Her meals are locally sourced, meat supplied by a local butcher and vegetables, strictly seasonal, by a Gloucester farmer.

Since her arrival, processed food has been banished from the menu at the school and no longer is lunch a case of "What will you have with your chips?" Instead, students can expect a range of cuisines, from traditional offerings like roasts and jacket potatoes to more exotic curries and kebabs.

Mrs Smith is successfully managing to broaden the palates of the students by encouraging them to experiment with new foods.

She speaks of students who, having tried a new dish for the first time, declare that they will campaign for parents to reproduce them at home, a significant achievement considering the appalled reaction that the majority of this generation's school children would display were their school dinners to appear on the kitchen table at home.

Mrs Smith, like Jamie Oliver, has demolished the belief that children are exclusively drawn to unhealthy foods like chips and sweets.

The students at Vale of Berkeley College consume great quantities of the vegetables prepared with flair in the school kitchens. Not even cabbage, long cast as the villain in nightmare school dinner folklore, is eschewed.

"I don't think they'd complain if we took chips off the menu," she said. Mrs Smith's recipes are largely her own, and new ideas are always quality-controlled at home by her children.

The cost of meals varies depending on the menu, but Mrs Smith is in no doubt that the average exceeds the figure of 37p pronounced by the national media to be the cost of the average school dinner.

Preparation is demanding; Mrs Smith and her two assistants arrive in the kitchens by 9am in order to be able to serve over 50 lunches by the midday lunch break.

The evidence suggests that the adverse effects of poor-quality dinners have been seriously underestimated. Since Mrs Smith joined the college, teachers have noticed a difference in students' behaviour during afternoon classes, reporting improved concentration levels. "One of the teachers even said the students seemed happier," she said, adding that this is a natural result of being fed with all the right nutrients.

The reduced incidence of athsma attacks and ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder) noticed in schools improving meal quality strongly suggests that the foods previously served contributed to these sorts of medical disorder.

Mr Farrell pointed out that for many children, school lunch is the main meal of the day. So it is encouraging "seeing the kids queuing up, taking a proper meal with all the trimmings, then sitting down and finishing it...compared with what they would have been getting 4 or 5 months ago. "This is really quite superb," he said.

Improvements are continuing and a local primary school has shown interest in serving its pupils meals prepared by Mrs Smith.

Mr Farrell and Mrs Smith are both admirers of Jamie Oliver's work but, as they point out, "We did it first!"