Children's Secretary Ed Balls announced yesterday that £53m would be spent on providing secondary schools with new cooking facilities, with a further £3.3m for recruiting specialist teaching assistants and training existing staff to run practical cooking lessons.
He also called for supermarkets and the food industry to play an active role in encouraging children to eat more healthily.
However, experts warned the money pledged was not nearly enough to address the problem.
Dr David Haslam, clinical director of the National Obesity Forum, said: "We welcome this announcement. But it doesn't sound like enough money to me. Tackling the obesity crisis will be expensive, but it will be cheaper than letting the NHS deal with the consequences [in years to come]."
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