Rotherham kids buck the trend on school meals

The School Food Trust - set up to encourage pupils to eat more healthily - is being urged to slow down planned further changes to school meal menus.

The move comes after some local councils reported a big drop in the number of pupils abandoning school dinners since the last changes were introduced.

New school food standards were initiated two years ago to cut down on the amount of fat, salt, and sugar being consumed by pupils, in favour of fresh fruit, veg, and locally-sourced produce.

In some parts of Britain catering managers say new menus have led to a sharp drop in the number of secondary pupils eating school dinners.

But in Rotherham the number of children eating school meals has remained almost exactly the same.

A Rotherham Council spokesman said: "When the new menus were brought in at the end of 2005 there was a very slight drop in the number of children eating in school - but for the past two years the numbers have remained stable.

"There is no evidence children in Rotherham are boycotting the new menus. We serve up around 15,900 meals a day and a lot of pupils have said how much they enjoy them."

Places like Hull, Bradford and York have all reported a big drop in the number of children staying for school dinners - and in Sheffield the number is said to have fallen by eight per cent in a year.

Sheffield Council's manager in charge of catering contracts, Sallie Swann, said: "We and our caterers have had discussions with the School Food Trust ask if we can slow down the changes to the menu. We are concerned about the numbers dropping off in secondary schools."

The Schools Food Trust was set up by the Government in 2005 to transform the food being eaten in school canteens. It is now responsible for ensuring school menus meet even stricter food standards.

The trust's media manager Emma Heesom said: "We have had letters from caterers and we know some of them would like us to slow down the changes to the menu.

"A slow change would have had its own problems just like a short, sharp shock. There is no easy way to change 20 years of pupils eating what they like when they like."

"We know a lot about what young people don't like. What we need to do is find out what they do like."