The chef is currently leading a campaign from the School Food Matters charity, Schools to Market to educate children better on where food comes from.
Aikens told the Evening Standard: “It still does astound me today that the majority of our population in the UK can’t cook for themselves. You can go to work in an office, tap away on a computer - but can we actually feed ourselves properly? No. I just find that absolutely barking mad.
“Having an education where you can cook and educate kids into healthy eating, or at least once they leave school they can cook themselves a proper meal, would be amazing. But a large proportion of kids who leave schools either haven’t had the opportunity or haven’t had the curriculum to give them the tools to be able to do that.
“If you look at the millions we are wasting on looking after people because they are not eating healthy foods and are now having problems - obesity, heart problems, we could plough [that] into educating children at an early age.”
The government is expected to release its long awaited childhood obesity strategy in the summer.