Jamie Oliver fears the school meals revolution he kickstarted is in danger of unravelling because ministers are ignoring research showing that nutritious lunches improve learning.
In an interview with the Guardian, the celebrity chef has accused the education secretary, Michael Gove, and the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, of putting at risk the changes that happened after his 2005 Channel 4 series, Jamie's School Dinners.
Some of Gove's decisions on school meals have led to unease among health and education campaigners. Gove has ended the school lunch grant as a separate source of funding and exempted academies from the nutritional standards for all other state schools that Labour introduced after Oliver's programmes highlighted the poor quality of much school food.
Oliver said: "Honestly, I'm very worried. I've had a couple of very cordial, interesting meetings with the secretary of state for education and although I would love to believe that Mr Gove has school food high on his agenda, I've not heard anything so far worth celebrating.
"I'm sure he realises that there are clear benefits to having good food in school: it improves a child's behaviour, willingness to learn and concentration at school, and that in turn helps children to achieve more and perform better.
"You would have to be an idiot to ignore all of the academic research that's been published to support these things, but still I don't see him or his ministerial colleagues in health actually doing anything to ensure that the improvements we have made over the last six years remain in place and are built upon – instead the progress we've made seems to be at risk."
Oliver added: "I used to have similar rants about the previous government so I'm absolutely not siding with one political party. In my experience forward-thinking politicians are a rare breed."
Asked if the government's decisions were due to the spending squeeze or ideology, Oliver replied: "I think it's a bit of both but as anyone in this area knows, we have to invest now so that we don't cripple the NHS or destroy the health of our kids later on."
Given obesity already costs the NHS an estimated £4bn a year, Oliver added, "we simply can't afford to cut costs in prevention work now because we will have an even bigger bill in the future. It's like any business: you have to invest in the short term to see a longer-term benefit."
In a new eight-point action plan for extending schools' influence over children's eating habits and knowledge of food, Oliver asks ministers to apply the nutritional standards to all schools and says "it would be incredibly disappointing and counterproductive not to make them mandatory for new academies too". Academies currently teach almost 1.2 million pupils.
The manifesto says: "If the government wants all schools to become academies in the long term, the reality is we risk losing the legislation that has made a difference as well as the benefits gained from raising nutritional standards."
Oliver also suggests introducing a new school food premium, which would give schools direct payments for increasing the number of pupils having school lunches. About 3 million of England's 7 million primary and secondary pupils eat them.
Charlie Powell of the Children's Food Campaign said: "We are unhappy that the school lunch grant has been amalgamated into the overall education budget because it means schools can spend it on anything they like, rather than increasing uptake of school meals."
But Judy Hargadon, chief executive of the School Food Trust (SFT), which helps schools improve take-up of meals, said she feared Oliver's idea could demotivate schools that faced the toughest task in persuading pupils to use the canteen regularly.
The Department for Education (DfE) released a letter Gove wrote to Oliver in August after they met, in which he said "I very much share your views about the importance of providing children and young people with healthy school food and about the benefits this brings", and promised "the government will continue to support and encourage schools to this end and support the improvements that have been achieved in recent years in schools food provision and food education".
He noted "with interest" the school food premium idea and has asked DfE officials "to discuss with the SFT how such an initiative could work in reality and how it would fit in alongside its ongoing work".
