Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver's recipe for better school lunches was panned by new British Health Minister Andrew Lansley.Britain's health chief delivered a smackdown to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on Wednesday, saying a campaign he inspired to make school lunches healthy was half-baked. After Oliver highlighted poor nutrition in schools, lawmakers ordered a menu overhaul - much like the one the cook is undertaking with his TV show set in West Virginia.
New Health Minister Andrew Lansley said Oliver's hands-on approach in school kitchens was a recipe for disaster.
"Actually the number of children eating school meals in many of these places didn't go up, it went down," he said. "So then the schools said, 'If you are bringing packed lunches, that's okay, but we've got to determine what's in your packed lunches. To which the parents' response was that they gave children money and actually children are spending more money outside school ... buying snacks in local shops. The net result of that is, somebody says the next thing we must do is we must ban shops near schools. Where do we end up with this?"
Oliver - who exposed culinary horrors like "Turkey Twizzlers" in his 2005 U.K. show - said Lansley got his facts wrong. "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, head-teachers and parent helpers who strive to feed schoolkids a nutritious, hot meal for 190 days of the year," he said.
Oliver's new show, "Food Revolution," in which he tries to get the people of Huntington, W.Va., to make better food choices, airs on ABC.
