He makes the obvious points that children need nutrition, and that they will be more likely to eat well at school if they enjoy and understand their food. He has persevered with his campaign in the face of many patronising comments and much establishment indifference.
While Jamie Oliver has been promoting good eating, Michael Gove has been promoting academies in the cause of “freeing schools from the shackles of local bureaucracy”. Academies are “expected” to comply with school nutritional standards, but on a voluntary basis and with no meaningful sanctions.
I’ve always supported healthy eating in schools, but I’ve never done much more than tell people what I believed, especially colleagues in the school meals service. On one school visit, I did criticise the installation of a prominent chocolate snack vending machine when told it had been introduced simply to make a profit for the school. But that hardly counts as “the shackles of local bureaucracy”.
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