LONDON - Please sir, we don't want any more!
Naked Chef Jamie Oliver's push for healthier foods to replace greasy french fries, chicken nuggets and turkey twizzlers on British school menus is in a twist.
Apparently, the students aren't anxious to try it.
The celebrity chef has led a countrywide campaign to improve the quality of food served in schools, demanding more money for meals and a ban on junk food.
His TV series "Jamie's School Dinners" exposed how cafeteria menus relied on prepared foods like chicken nuggets or the turkey twizzler - a corkscrew of mainly reconstituted turkey scraps and preservatives. Such meals, usually served with piles of fatty french fries, could cost as little as 66 U.S. cents.
Spurred to action, the government set up the School Food Trust in 2005 to help schools improve the quality of their food. Sample menus for the new program included vegetarian quiche, lentil burgers and mushroom tagliatelle.
But more than 424,000 students opted out of their school meal plans in the first two years of the program, according to government figures obtained by the opposition Liberal Democrats and released Monday.
The figures show a 17 per cent drop among secondary school students and a 9.6 per cent drop among primary school pupils since the 2004-2005 school year. Students who opt out must either pack their own lunch or buy it elsewhere.
Oliver is best known as the star of the television show "The Naked Chef" - a reference not to nudity but to the bare simplicity of his recipes. Although he remains the public face of the effort to get children to eat healthily, he has no formal role in the School Food Trust.
Nevertheless, on Monday the chef urged parents and the government to stay committed to the program.
"I'm still committed to it, but really over the next five years, we'll see that negative turn into a positive," he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "We have to be philosophical, we have to keep supporting it," he said. "We have to know and do what's best for our kids."
The British government has warned that one in six British children is obese, saying the figure could rise to half of all children by 2050.
The School Food Trust confirmed the numbers had dropped, but said the trend was part of a decline that began before the government committed two years ago to spending $560 million on improving meals.
"The School Food Trust was very realistic when we began the transformation of school meals. We were always anticipating a drop," the agency said in a statement.
No "parent, caterer or head teacher would disagree that with increasing levels of type two diabetes, heart disease and obesity, something had to be done," the statement said.
One factor in the drop may be children's reluctance to change their eating habits, trust spokesman Brian Dow said.
"This is a major cultural shift in children's attitudes, in five years time I think we will see significant growth," Dow told BBC television. "Gradually, children will get used to it."
School caterers say they support the program's aims, but believe the changes may be too extreme.
"We believe that such radical changes to young peoples dietary habits are too draconian and the speed of their introduction is too fast," the Local Authority Caterers Association said in a July report.
There are also indications the government may need to spend more on the program.
The requirements for fresher ingredients mean the average primary school meal price has risen 20 per cent since 2003 to $3.88, the association said. More than 91 per cent of school caterers say they are now breaking even or losing money, compared to 2003 when all caterers were profitable.
