Jamie Oliver rides again

Like a fat man diving into a swimming pool, Jamie Oliver made a big splash today across the papers today. In a piece of classic photo PR, the Saviour of British Children dressed up in a latex 'fat suit' to make a trailer for a one-off follow-up to his campaigning TV series Jamie's School Dinners. The trailer apparently shows Oliver's trademark scooter 'collapsing' under his weight. The implication was that if we didn't change the diet in school canteens, more and more kids would become obese adults.

There's nothing wrong with suggesting that school food could be improved - though they were never exactly haute cuisine. But an alarmist television programme that guilt-trips us into spending more on school meals - possibly at the expense of other areas of the education budget - is not conducive to a balanced debate about where to spend our money. This is particularly true when the TV programme in question makes sensationalist claims about the dangers of current meal provision. Feeding children burgers, chips and beans on a regular basis is hardly going to be the determining factor in how children eat as adults but inculcating the message from a tender age that your diet will kill you is a particularly insidious piece of food poisoning.

Ironically, the effect Jamie's School Dinners has been to cut the number of children taking hot meals each day, as parents avoid the apparently lethal cocktail of processed food offered, while catering staff are stewing over increased workloads with inadequate rewards. Which begs the question: do such crusades benefit the celebrities more than the supposed recipients of their assistance? It's food for thought.

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