Jamie's School Dinners
Jamie's School Dinners is a four-episode documentary series broadcast on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom from 23 February to 16 March 2005. The series was recorded between Spring to Winter 2004, in which it featured TV chef Jamie Oliver attempting to improve the quality and nutritional value of school dinners at a typical British school, Kidbrooke School in the Royal Borough of Greenwich — a goal which ultimately led to a broader campaign to improve school dinners throughout Britain.
Episodes
Jamie Oliver works at Kidbrooke School, Greenwich, London, under fiery head cook Nora, to learn about the mechanics of school catering and how the kids relate to his food. Can he cook nutritious food that the kids will eat, at the right price, and which the dinner ladies can easily prepare? Will he also be brave enough to ban French fries from the canteen?
Jamie Oliver heads to County Durham for a better understanding of Britain’s dysfunctional food culture and younger kids’ relationships with food. Working with a primary school class of children, he is amazed at their diet and lack of knowledge about food as he attempts to get them to try foods they’ve never eaten before by visiting local farms. He also spends time with one of the pupil’s families — a family with seven children —to try and understand their home food habits and encourage healthier meals. After everything he learns about school catering and kids’ tastes, he takes a bold step visiting Britain’s largest school catering company to try to ban junk food from their menus.
Jamie returns to Greenwich, where he convinces Norah to become his right-hand woman in taking over the borough and to help promote his "Feed Me Better" campaign. He identifies local suppliers that can source his new produce and finalizes changes to the menus, but realizes his biggest challenge will be to retrain the cooks. Oliver and Norah organize a "Dinner Lady Camp" with the Army Catering Corporation—a workshop for all Head Cooks in the school’s district, where they will learn to cook school lunches the Jamie Oliver way.
It’s back to school after autumn half-term holidays and the dinner ladies in Greenwich are now trying to cook school dinners Jamie Oliver-style. Oliver meets with the government to lobby them to support his "Feed Me Better" campaign and to ban junk food in schools. If he gets it right, he plans to devise a blueprint for school lunches that will empower schools and local authorities across the UK to change their school meals forever. Will the government listen or will Oliver have to go it alone?
Two years on, Jamie revisits the school dinners campaign to see what effect, if any, the government changes have made to schools in Greenwich and beyond.
