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The Food Programme

The School Food Plan

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4976 Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2013

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The School Food Plan, written by Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent, aims to increase take-up of school meals, improve the quality of food served and tackle student hunger and the early causes of health problems.

Released in July, it contains sixteen 'actions', from putting cooking in the curriculum to providing money for breakfast clubs to improving the 'image' of school food. John and Henry travelled to more than sixty schools in England, and found that there were three things in common to schools that are getting food right.

In this edition of the Food Programme, Sheila Dillon reveals a typical day at the David Young Community Academy, a secondary school in Leeds that has embodied these three 'principles' since its opening in 2006.

The school, led by Principal Ros McMullen, has a school meals take-up of over seventy percent, compared with a national average of 43 percent. Sheila finds out how they've done this, and asks what other schools can learn from their approach.

Sheila also asks the Plan's co-author Henry Dimbleby and Jeanette Orrey, who inspired Jamie Oliver's original school food campaign, what actual differences we may see on the ground as a result of this new attempt to change the way that schoolchildren eat.

Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

0:03.8

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

0:08.6

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

0:15.0

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

0:20.0

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

0:23.7

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

0:28.3

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

0:30.2

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

0:36.1

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

0:39.7

Hello, I'm Sheila Dylan and welcome to this BBC download of the Food Program.

0:45.8

For information on the BBC's terms and conditions of use, visit

0:49.4

W.W. dot B.C. dot co-

0:52.6

UK slash radio four and now enjoy the podcast

0:58.6

it's now tempestate in the morning

1:01.0

we are busy potting up, cheese, fruit, tuna, cold water, everything fresh for the day

1:10.4

to put out for lunch time for the children.

1:14.0

While the first of its a thousand children arrive for breakfast at the David Young Community Academy,

1:20.0

fresh lunch prep has started. The Academy sits on a low hill, a huge oval of glass-wooden concrete,

1:28.0

handsome in its landscape surroundings.

1:31.0

Its high-perimeter fence with electronic locks is the only immediate sign that were in one of the toughest areas of Leeds.

1:39.0

It's an academy sponsored by the Church of England, but it's open equally to all faiths and non.

1:45.0

And when it opened seven years ago, under the same head and management team who lead it now,

...

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