1st May 2012 - 00:00
Abstract
The head of a UK school catering firm has responded to Jamie Oliver's latest attack on the attitude to school food standards by Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove.
In his blistering attack over school food, Oliver claimed that some of Gove's flagship academies are lowering nutrition levels among pupils and profiteering from junk food vending machines because they have been allowed to ignore national standards. Steve Quinn, MD of Cucina Restaurants said: "Jamie's onslaught may fool the public into thinking that not much has been achieved in raising nutritional standards in academies. "And while I'm a huge fan of what Jamie has, and continues to achieve in raising awareness of the urgent need for better school food standards, I am keen to redress his latest outburst. I'm also worried that this current debate ignores the really high standards which we set in our school restaurants." Urging the need for strict adherence to basic nutritional standards in all schools, Quinn said: "We are making tremendous strides in our client schools, offering wide choices of tasty, nutritious food tripling and quadrupling uptakes of school dinners. Can't these kinds of achievements occasionally share the spotlight?" Quinn welcomed MP Zac Goldsmith's early day motion to make government guidelines mandatory in all academies, with the added suggestion that successful academy kitchens could be used as models to help inform future.
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