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National School Meals Week started yesterday with Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg joining children at Oxford’s Brasserie Blanc where Raymond Blanc gave them a cooking masterclass. Nick Clegg also participated in a bread-making lesson led by Lorraine Pascale at a school in North London.

Hundreds of schools across the country will also be taking part in the celebrations, which mark the biggest healthy eating awareness week aimed at children in England and Wales. With one in five children leaving primary school overweight and obese, ensuring a healthy, nutritionally balanced school lunch has never been so important.

To help raise awareness and enhance children’s relationships with food, school cooks will be taking their skills out of the school kitchen to showcase to parents and pupils the variety and quality of food now being served in schools.

Today’s planned activities include:

• Pop-up school kitchen outside Parliament to serve great school lunches to MPs. Top school food will be served by award-winning school chefs, including organic beef Jamaican Pie with mash, vegetable paella, cheesy leak pasta and tutti fruiti crumble.
• Celebrity chefs working with schools to highlight the tasty, health school food, including Gregg Wallace helping to serve lunch in Kent and Lorraine Pascale cooking for pupils in Haringey.
• School chefs cooking a great school lunch at high-profile venues across the country, including the restaurants in Parliament, Manchester City football club and the Gherkin in London.

At yesterday’s event, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said:

“It’s a very simple truth that if you don’t give children a healthy, balanced meal at lunchtime, you can’t expect them to sit down, concentrate and learn well in the afternoon.

“That’s why I’m so proud of the work we’ve done in Government to put school food back on the agenda. We’ve introduced new food standards, cooking on the curriculum and free school meals, which can save families up to £400 per year, help children do better in class and improve their daily diet.

“This week is about not only encouraging children to really understand and enjoy the food they eat but to celebrate all the schools chefs and catering staff who work day-in day-out to help provide school meals and ensure that we live in a fairer society where every child can get the best possible start in life, regardless of their background.”

Carrieanne Bishop, National Chair of LACA, the lead association for catering in education, said:

“It is vital to our children’s wellbeing that they eat a healthy, nutritious hot meal on a regular basis. National School Meals Week is about celebrating the great school lunch and showing the great quality of meals on offer to students every day. School food has come a long way in the 21 years since the first National School Meals Week with school cooks now amongst the best chefs in the country.

She added: “A school lunch helps young people recharge their batteries to be at their best for afternoon lessons, and for many students a school lunch is the only hot and healthy meal they will get.”

Other events throughout the week include:

• School chefs are going out to more than 65 high profile venues across England and Wales to show off their professionalism – from the House of Commons restaurant, Gherkin and Harrods in London to Rick Steins Seafood Restaurant in Padstow. From the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst to Man city’s renowned restaurant, from Soughton Hall in North Wales to Chilli Pickle in Brighton and from Titchwell Manor in Norfolk to the Michelin star Stageside restaurant at the Hippodrome in Birmingham.

• Celebrity Chef Judge, Gregg Wallace, is visiting a school in Kent to look at the food journey from local allotment to school dinner plate.

• Schools Minister, David Laws is visiting Thomas Jones Primary School in West London. He says “Eating a healthy, nutritious meal at school has been proven to help children do better academically and we have made great progress in ensuring more and more pupils all over the country can enjoy those benefits. NSMW provides a chance to show off the creativity and talent of our hard working school cooks and catering staff to the wider community.”

• Wednesday will see LACA celebrate 25 years in a display set-up within the House of Commons – many MPs having accepted an invite to attend, see the good work LACA has done, and continues to do, and better understand the journey the industry has been on and recognise the hard work of those who have ‘made it happen’.

For further information visit: http://www.nsmw.org.uk