There was a wonderful television series on BBC Two in the 1990s called Two Fat Ladies, which I still consider to be the high water mark of cooking shows. Robust and absurd, Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright would serve up dishes of full-fat grub to satisfy even the heartiest appetites of the portly British public.
I’ve always loved my grub, and school dinners were no exception. I was enrolled in the local state primary well before Jamie Oliver had established himself as the nation’s school dinner guru. Nutritional standards were scarce and a standard lunchtime was spent in the company of chips, greasy sausage pie and Mrs Dawson’s treacle sponge pudding and custard.
Child obesity was rocketing but we scoffed our faces in blissful naivety, unlike how omniscient Ofsted’s eye today sees all, driving forward great leaps towards wholesome diets in schools.
Lunchtimes should be a welcome break in the day. I would squirm in my seat for those final moments of double French, until the bell reached its peal, when we were finally free from imprisonment, and could chow down on food we really enjoyed, albeit off the chart in its salt content.
Today, I watch my students play with tiny bowls of sugar-free jelly and fruit salad. I’m all in favour of five a day but those who deem banana and pear to be an enjoyable dessert for a 10-year-old need their head examined.
Many schools claim to offer healthy meals yet don’t actually do what they say on the tin. A few years back, I worked at a large secondary, the canteen of which housed a pathetic excuse for a salad bar. Next to it stood a station of burgers, hot-dogs and chicken nuggets. It doesn’t take a mastermind to work out what the kids chose.
‘Robots slap down the mash’
The service has changed too. The once charismatic catering staff of yesteryear have transformed into droids, impersonal and businesslike, slapping mash on our trays like automata and moving us along in factory line form.
I remember with great affection Mrs MacKay, a chubby-faced dinner lady, whose chin would quiver like lemon curd as she laughed heartily at the clattering of trays and the jostling of elbows as we pushed and shoved in line. She would plate us up extra Yorkshires on Fridays and her cherry bakewell tart was legendary.
She has been replaced by an army of robotic shift workers who take no joy in my penchant for extra kidney.
Nor is it any fun being on lunch duty and watching your students finger their cauliflower and string beans. Children need to be healthy. This I fully endorse. But come midday, they also need steam for their engines and not in the form of bland stir-fry, the portion of which is barely large enough to feed a mouse.
Too often these days, if you want healthy, wholesome and delicious meals, you have two options: bring your own, or pay the astronomical fees of boarding school. Some of these institutions provide dinners worthy of a Michelin star.
Otherwise it’s limp chicken and salad sandwiches on wholemeal bread. Sad times, indeed.
I blame Jamie.
Adam Bernard is a British teacher who currently teaches English at a school in New York City
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