Jamie Oliver and British Health Secretary Squabble Over School Lunches

Jamie Oliver's School Dinners healthy lunch program in the UK has had the results one might hope for: a slight uptick in the percentage of students eating the (now healthier) meals. That's just not good enough for British Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, who recently publicly berated Oliver for "lecturing," and claiming that actually, the number of students eating school lunches has gone down since Oliver's program began.

While there was a sharp decline in students participating in lunch programs immediately after the launch of the School Dinners program, Oliver feels that the recent increase shows that his program had nothing to do with that:

To say School Dinners hasn't worked is not just inaccurate but is also an insult to the hard work of hundreds of thousands of dinner ladies, teachers, headteachers and parent helpers who strive to feed schoolkids a nutritious, hot meal for 190 days of the year.

He also accuses Lansley of headline chasing. Boys? Do we need to have a chat? It seems both of you are fighting for the same goal: healthy kids. The rest of it is semantics.

· Jamie Oliver Hits Back After Health Secretary's Criticism [Telegraph]
· All Jamie Oliver coverage on Eater National [-E-]

· [Photo: The Independent]