School dinners that no-one wants

I'm not remotely surprised that healthy school dinners are being spurned by pupils. Good food is is an acquired habit. If your normal diet is salty, sugary and fatty then these are the tastes you crave, and the offer of something different five lunchtimes a week is not going to appeal.

Which means that all the millions we are spending on improving school meals, and all the hours of effort by thoughtful, well-meaning cooks, are being scraped into the bin.

The only way schoolchildren will eat healthy meals is to offer them no choice of menu, and to keep them in school at lunchtime so they can't go out and find fast food. It sounds draconian, but other countries do it, and if we are even halfway serious about wanting to address children's health issues it is the only way to make progress.