About this episode
What is the current school meal model, how well is it working and how has the pandemic highlighted existing problems and created new ones? More importantly, given the very public problems that have cropped up in recent months, how can the system be improved and made more sustainable and resilient? Sheila Dillon brings together a panel of school food visionaries to re-imagine the way we provide meals to pupils across the UK, and consider whether and how we could change the system for the better. They are Jeanette Orrey - a former dinner lady and winner of the BBC Food and Farming Awards Cook of the Year, now a school meals campaigner and co-founder of Food for Life, an organisation focused on transforming school food and food culture; Nicole Pisani - a former head chef at Yotam Ottolenghi’s London restaurant NOPI, now a school chef and co-founder of the organisation Chefs in Schools, bringing together chefs and teachers to change attitudes to school meals and food education; and Christina Adane - a food poverty activist and chair for the Youth Board of BiteBack2030, a youth-led movement on a mission to fight child obesity and give young people access to healthy food and lifestyles. The panel also hear from past programmes that featured schools doing something special around food provision: St Winnow’s School in Cornwall, Logie Primary School in Moray and Washingborough Academy in Lincolnshire. Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Lucy Taylor Photo: Washingborough Academy's Chef Michael Richardson prepares meal boxes for delivery during the pandemic (2020).