Should School Meals Be Plant-Based? (Your Radical Questions with Jamie Oliver)

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau. Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Your Radical Questions, where I put your questions to one of our brilliant radical guests.

0:48And this is your chance to engage very directly and really connect with the super smart, interesting people that we have on this podcast and ask them about their ideas for the future. We are thrilled, thrilled with how you've responded so far. Thank you so much for all of you who've been in touch, which is a lot of people. In this episode, we're going to put your questions to the chef, author and campaigner, Jamie Oliver, who's recently written a book called Eat Yourself Healthy, and who's just been telling me what he thinks Britain is getting wrong. Not just wrong, but badly wrong today. Jamie, are you feeling ready for some questions from our listeners?

1:23Yes, sir. Let's do it. All right, this one, in the interview we've just done, which people can go back and listen to at their leisure, You talked about why you're very concerned about obesity in Britain, and that is a concern that is shared by one of our listeners who sent this in. Dear Amol and Jamie, my name is Petey. I'm a UK-trained gastroenterologist currently working in Melbourne, Australia. I'm a huge fan of both the Radical podcast and of Jamie's school dinners, which I watched as a teenager. The obesity crisis has long concerned me as I see it on the sharp end. It is killing people early, and I'm witnessing its consequences in ever younger adults.

2:01How can we effectively legislate to restrict availability and marketing of ultra-processed foods, including limiting the number of fast food outlets, restricting marketing aimed at children, having mandatory front-of-pack healthcare warnings, and introducing tax levies on ultra-processed foods to protect the health of our children and of future generations? Thank you so much for your time. Anything's possible. We want to offer the public true choice, but true choice doesn't mean just restriction. It's also encouraging normal foods as well, right? It's not just saying no, it's about saying yes.

2:40Obesity and diet-related disease is a normal response to an abnormal environment. So that's because we're being proliferated with marketing, advertising, junk food, shops, and there's loads of things within genres genres of different types of restaurants that you can do to make it slightly healthier so this is a really obvious example but having 10 holes uh instead of 20 holes for salt for the salt shaker is a metaphor for all kinds of things that you could do to just make things slightly healthier you could have a and very boringly have a an oil strategy for less saturated oils for frying chips incredibly powerful and you can pick the dirty oil up and deal with that as well There's loads of geeky things you can do to amplify better health outcomes and less of the bad stuff.

3:25So restricting marketing aimed at children. Yeah. Presumably, if children are spending more time on screens, you want to get to where they are. It's everything we've talked about, right? So, of course, when I worked with the Mayor of London and when the digital advertising billboards came out, we were then finally able to prove that junk food advertisers were hunting children, right? And as soon as the kids went to school, it was all the junk food advertisers. The minute, literally 10 minutes after they got on the bus, it all went to holidays and cars. That's not luck. So, yeah, we don't want our children hunted as far as junk food advertising is concerned.

4:02We want them protected. We don't want an overuse of things that we know are unhealthy or cancerous. So certain foods should be removed or banned. if we know that there's ill health and bad health because of say lack of fiber you know most most brits are 16 grams deficit in fiber every day which sounds incredibly boring but basically is like hugely powerful in your health so we can incentivize getting more fiber into us in many many different ways so you successfully campaigned for a sugar tax what about pratana's point about introducing tax levies on ultra processed foods how would you do that i think you could it would be very easy to do and sculpt but more importantly for the public at large we wouldn't have to take away your choice we could just amplify more choice if that makes sense so um you know naturally if you have like really delicious nice fresh food products next to processed food like you can you can start to erode their sales and and absolutely you could tax for certain things i mean certainly some of the sulfates and stuff like that that are in um cured meats and stuff are very unhealthy so we can look at that.

5:09There's loads that we can do. So she's absolutely on the money and whether it's Australia or the UK, we've got some serious work. We're quite slow to address this stuff. Interestingly, they've got a social media ban for under 16s in Australia, which people are looking at. How many books have you sold in Australia? A lot. I think it's one in every 24 homes. Prathana, thank you very much indeed. Always nice to have a voice note from Melbourne. Wonderful. It shows us that Radical is reaching a massive global audience, which we suspected, but it's nice to have confirmation. Anyway, our next question is from a young person who didn't give us their name.

5:46It's completely authentic, but I'm going to read it to you because we think it's interesting. So this is Anonymous. Hi, Jamie. Hi, Amol. I've just left secondary school. And as a vegetarian and someone concerned about the quality of school meals and vegetarian and vegan school meals, I wonder if you have any thoughts on a school-wide investment into a movement towards nutritional and better quality, predominantly plant-based meals, as opposed to a lot of the lower quality meat-focused meals on offer at the moment. It's a very interesting and somewhat controversial conversation. So from a completely non-biased point of view, what's interesting is contrary to all the advertising that people are being pumped with at the moment, which is more protein, this more protein, that more protein, this Britain does not suffer from having not enough protein.

6:36But it does from lacking fiber. Yes, exactly. So but if you go out and advertise at the moment, it's all protein stuff that they're upselling. Right. So the truth is, is that British kids are not having too little protein. And if you wanted to spread the money further in the institution of school lunches, I have seen many amazing vegetarian only schools, which are utterly delicious as a meat eater and a fish eater. Utterly delicious, incredibly nutritious, beautifully executed. They've got more money to spend on whatever they choose. So either better foods or more cooks on the line or, you know, more robust equipment that allows them to do different things.

7:17And also it makes the health and safety and cross-contamination much simpler. So from a technical point of view, if British schools went veggie tomorrow, there's lots of arguments, logical arguments as to why you could, should and would benefit from it. what happens is and particularly in poorer communities but certainly you'll see it in developing countries is the first thing that's affected when countries develop is protein consumption so if you take if you take meat away from british kids at school that will be dragged through the press backwards even though the logic is potentially against it and they will see it as taking vital stuff away and they'll say we've got shorter kids and that we're not walking tall in the world because our kids aren't getting enough protein.

8:03British kids get enough protein. So there is some logic in what this person's suggesting. I think vegans definitely would be going too far, certainly for a holistic view on kids, and people will fight that. But if you're feeding a nation, I think. But vegetarian, there's loads of bandwidth for loads of delicious food. It would save you a load of money and simplify the system. Beans, beans, nuts, legumes, high fibre. yeah i am protein but more importantly some of the best food school food systems i've seen are actually veggie honestly and uh and brilliant wonderful all right thank you very much for that anonymous question whack your headphones on because we reckon we've got a voice note for you okay and this is from craig hi amol and hello jamie oliver my name is craig davidson i'm a retired doctor and have become interested in the link between food and our health what i'd like to ask you, Jamie, is why it's been so difficult to improve school food.

9:05I'm impressed by the practice in Japan where the children eat with their teachers healthy seasonal food. Why can we not do this? Such an interesting question, Craig. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm happy to say that there are many schools, honestly, where kids eat with their teachers and they'll eat seasonal food. um uh so the school food standards that i introduced 20 years ago they're out of date now but they're good um and they're being updated thank god um but that's 25 years give or take right um so when you see good practice and this is part of the reason that i started a competition a national competition about three years ago um it's the school food awards to to award and shine a light and big up and we go on things like the one show and all sorts of shows and all the newspapers to big up school head cooks teams head teachers food educators sports and nutrition educators we shine a light on them and give them love which is much you know is beautiful to do on in a big way but mainly the reason that we do it is because instead of me telling stories about what's wrong and what's bad we shine a light on what's good and so it's essentially a public memo about what does good look like.

10:19And the truth is the school food standards that even exist now are good, and you can go beyond them. So, yes, in Japan, they're doing an amazing job. Culturally, they're very different. They're much more structured, hierarchical, and chauvinist, and structured than we are. There's a sort of honor code. I have never been to Japan. Well, I've had restaurants there. I've worked there fairly prolifically for three years, and they're amazing. It's extraordinary culture, very different to the Brits. But they are brilliant at seeing structure, honour, hierarchy, all of those sort of things. I can see why they do it very well.

11:04But I think one of the things that Craig was getting at was he likes what's going on in Japan. He says, why does he think, as in why does Jamie think, it's been so difficult to improve school food here? Now, for all that there has been improvements, what have been the obstacles? The trouble that I've had since day one, 25 years ago, is that there is no compliance. So we're talking to the government at the moment about having some broad stroke compliance about who's meeting the standards. My guess is that 40 % of schools are good and 40 % are OK, maybe less, and 20 % to 30 % are rubbish. right um that's i know that that's much better than it was 25 years ago um but we don't know who needs help we don't and and and like it's not like ofsted and and and the kind of stress behind that like we're not trying to catch people out and tell them off no no no quite the opposite if we know who's in or out of compliance then we can deploy love care attention equipment training and even we can do that outside of the government.

12:07But we don't know. So can you see what I'm saying? If you think about it, it's like, you know, six, seven million kids a day. It's about 33 million schools. You know, it's the biggest food franchise on the planet. There's no group of, there's no one bigger than the British school system. Like to do a thousand covers in 45 minutes would make most chefs cry, you know. And yet we do it in schools, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I think to your doctor's point, like the fact that we have, there's many things we can't promise. But if we've got you 190 days of the year for breakfast and lunch, there's a lot we can promise.

12:44And we can be half responsible for a lot of good or a lot of bad. So I kind of want it to be on the side of good. Craig, thank you very much indeed. Hope that answers your question. In fact, it's a very thorough answer to your question. This is another one. By the way, I should just say, obviously, because it's Jamie Oliver, we've got a huge number of questions. Thank you so much to everyone who sent them in. I'm really, really sorry if we don't get to your question, but we're going to try and rattle through lots of them, which is why I'm saying not very much. This is another voice note, and it's from David.

13:10Firstly, thank you, Jamie, for changing my life. I grew up in Saffron Malden, your hometown, and discovered by total chance your TV programmes when I was a spotty 16-year-old. Suddenly, the world of food was opened up to me in an accessible and fun way, and I'd had my eyes opened. Since then, I've become a keen cook, baker, cafe owner and food enthusiast, alongside running my family businesses still in Saffron Morden. When you go to Europe as a rule, the standard of bakery, patisserie and even supermarket is so much higher than in the UK. I know there are exceptions, but how can we in the UK move towards a food production and sales system which promotes higher quality ingredients for food, something which we clearly lag behind mainland Europe on?

13:51What can we as consumers and the people who care do to move the wider population and therefore the major supermarkets and food providers towards a more organic, sustainable and higher quality product offering? David, thank you so much. What a thoughtful question. Big question. Local boy. I have to try and find him now, see where he is. OK, look, I think there's kind of key holders along all parts. So clearly the government needs to be more thorough, more ninja and more detailed and get stuff done. Regulation, taxation, you know, for good, like to create the template of the rules. Then what they have in France that he quotes that we don't have very commonly or at all really is what they call a confari.

14:38Right. And a confari is basically a group. If you want to joke about it, you can say a bit like the Freemasons. right now confari would you'd have a confari i'm i'm a member of of the crusty lot which is a very specific bread bread from a very specific part of of france with a very specific recipe and specific grains which are ancient um ancient genetics like ancient flavors and an ancient method of cooking right and and there's about 50 people that are a member of this little kind of freemasoncy confari and that's just one bread of hundreds and we're not talking about the cider or the cheese or the the pastries so the sort of unions so yes so a consortium right so the french were very very very good uh first of all if you think about if you think about it champagne right champagne has to come from champagne well if you then think about it like cheddar's the most made cheese on the planet and most of it like 99.9 % of it ain't made in cheddar so that's not good for cheddar it ain't good for Britain and it's not good for quality and standards right so the French were very very good at creating these you know these DOPs these legislations around what is what and protecting that legally and then the confaris are outside of government and they say no no no no if you want to call it that you have to do it this way and if you don't you will get a slap I mean literally you probably would of course that drives demand doesn't it because people want to buy in for the thing you could only get for france what you do is you like the concept of the normalization of a confari or a group or a consortium it takes away this kind of like low lying energy of competition being negative and it starts to amplify a group of people that are obsessed because i can promise you one thing anyone like your man here anyone that makes david anyone that makes great product in britain in food has never made an easy pound ever and And they're nearly always, if not always, amazing people.

16:35Right. They're not taking the easy route. Right. So. So I think the idea of being part of a consortium and a group and having a structure and meeting up quarterly and having celebrations and they all wear funny outfits and they go through the street. Right. And making a bit of a big deal about something is very French and and it works. And. The French are so good. I mean, you can say what you like, but they are very good. But ultimately what we're talking about is culture. Exactly. It's a bit like the whole thing about in France being a waiter is a much more kind of esteemed public position and there's a craft to it and it's respected.

17:15It's not just your first job in a way that maybe it is in this country. David, thank you. So start a confari. David, start a confari. Do it in Saffron Walden and Jamie Oliver might pay you a visit. Thank you so much. Right, our final question is about your campaign, Jamie, around dyslexia and neurodiversity. And it comes from Keefe. In 1974, I began teaching PE and science in Romford, Essex, having struggled in school like Jamie. So I focused on the learning and development of children like us, which are now labelled SEND. Jamie's Dyslexia Revolution and Jamie's Dream School were attempts to illustrate the radical changes our education system and schools need to prevent the huge rise in poor health, well-being and life chances.

18:03For 40 years I've asked parents and I'd like to ask Jamie this question, what do you think our children most need to learn and develop to achieve good health well-being and life chances in the modern world oh what a question keith you could keep can we have keith every week first of all he used the word radical in this question secondly jamie was nodding vigorously all the way through that so the key thing at the end of that then jamie is and by the way keith thank you so much for recounting your own at times difficult personal experience what do our children most need to learn and develop to achieve good health well-being and life chances in the modern world?

18:40I think life skills aren't really given any kudos but of course what life skills could be quite a wide remit right so and I would love the debate and it would be a fun debate about what should be in life skills but obviously from my permission it's 10 recipes to save your life knowing the basics of nutrition where food comes from and how it affects your body and the planet like that would be part of my life skills if I made it compulsory for every child that leaves british schools that's my dream is that every child in britain that leaves at 16 would know those 10 recipes to save their life no matter what life throws at them rich or poor right um and then if it's the kind of more of a martin lewis vibe then it's of course it's it's kind of home economics from a kind of like um debt investment all the things that life actual literacy yeah like what's a mortgage how does it work like you know what what what if i've got interest rates at this like a pension compound investment like setting up a bank account what are these bank accounts are these good are these bad like so all of those things but you might have other people saying no one can change a plug and have you looked at the statistics of people electrocuting themselves it's quite high so why don't we just teach kids how to change a plug we need to recycle and upcycle things more so like how to fix a table and take a scratch out and make i don't i don't really know what should be in life skills but i do feel that um you want i mean the amount of people said they don't even know how to put a load on the washing machine do you know It's like basics.

20:00The bit of Keith's question where you were nodding most vigorously was when he said that when he was bemoaning the emphasis on academic education, and I don't think you're doing that because you're against academic education. No, I'm not against it at all. It's more you think that the obsession with it has a cost, which is that we're not equipping people for the real world. I think clearly we're not getting it all wrong, but we're just not getting enough right. And clearly there are schools that are extraordinary, and of course that energy comes from the leaders, the heads, and you have some extraordinary heads around the country and we can define and find great practice very quickly.

20:33But I do think that there's probably a bit of rebalancing to do. Part of that will be, I mean, if you look at what's changed over 10, 20 years, it's so slow, but it hasn't found AI yet. So like whatever anyone says, and I'm not saying I'm pro against this, that or the other, or the idea of screens, no screens, or the etiquette of screens or or but um i remember the first computers bbc 24 um coming into my primary school and um and like everyone was saying loads of things about it but i but i do think that um you know the power of these things like how can we be optimal and what's appropriate and polite and safe within digital behavior um so of course yeah you can do what the aussies are doing which is just banning all social media for under 16 year olds and i'm not saying i haven't i mean that sounds pretty good to me to be fair but that's just quite and i need to look into that deeper but but it sounds pretty good because it's a frightening place and when everyone else is when the masses are doing something and your kid isn't you know like i mean i remember like i was the last to give my kids got a phone when they went to secondary school and they were the last in the whole year to get a phone you held out and but parents for the last year were saying it's child abuse to not give them a phone before that time because everyone's congregating and convening and you're one's the only one that ain't doing it because they haven't got a phone so i mean it's a i mean it's also weird to parent and navigate that and for better or for worse you know so um but back to yeah i think 10 recipes for your life financial literacy and have a healthy relationship and yeah i think life skills to to underpin the brilliance of science and physics and this and that and the other.

22:20But I personally think that whether we like it or not, education has to and will radically change because of power of AI in the next 10 years. I think what good could look like could be fascinating and how we rebalance that optimal learning in nuances of the individuals in the class at different rates, maybe different year groups like and also find ways to bring humans together and congregate and sing and do and be. And like, I think the role of the teacher has never been more important. You know, I think teachers are incredible. And I could not agree more. All the more reason, don't you think, to have a leading podcast called Radical with Amal Rajan.

23:06There you go. Jamie, it has been such a joy. Thank you for actually really engaging with our listeners' questions. I should tell you that there's loads we haven't got through, but maybe when we get you back at some other point, when you open up another restaurant and get out another book, we will have you back and answer some of those questions. It's been fantastic talking to you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

23:26That was, of course, the magnificent Jamie Oliver answering your radical questions. I will be back on Thursday when I'm speaking to the acclaimed bestselling author, the remarkable Naomi Alderman. You're going to hear her answering your questions next Monday. I promise you those episodes are going to be an absolute cracker. Talk to you soon. Goodbye.

23:57Hello, I'm Emma Barnett. For most of my career, I've been on live radio and I love it. But I've always wondered, what if we'd had more time? How much deeper does the story go? I remember having this very sharp thought that what you do right now, this is it. This defines your life. I'm ready to talk and ready to listen. I'm insulted by how little the medical community has ever bothered with this. Ready to talk with me, Emma Barnard, is my new podcast. Listen on BBC Sounds. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed.

24:41But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. www.this Freeman Transport被Maddenense2013.com www.hiseffectivebackwork

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