The school dinners journey instigated by Jamie Oliver may be far from over, but Kitchen Rat hears that the end is nigh for school catering brand Scolarest.

Having received a very public kicking at the height of the school dinners story in 2005 - Turkey Twizzlers becoming a catch-all phrase for all that was wrong with the system - "new Compass", as it essentially is now under Roy Gardner and Richard Cousins, has decided to make a break with the past and phase out the Scolarest brand.

So, before term is out, the sector's biggest private caterer will be trading as Chartwells, a brand that is active in the USA and until now had been reserved for the independent school market in the UK.

It would seem, Jamie Oliver casts a long shadow...

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Jamie Oliver has criticised local authorities for the fact that only 5,000 out of the 125,000 dinner ladies had been trained in healthier eating. Oliver said that it was a "bloody disgrace" that more attention had not been given to these those serving food to children in schools. 

Speaking in front of a select committee group of MPs, Oliver also said that more support needed to be given to the School Food Trust. He praised their work, but said that "as they are a government quango they can't always tell the truth. They can't be as outspoken as I can be".

However, Oliver added that there were flaws in the government's plans to teach primary school children to cook. He demanded that the government invest £6.5 billion over the next ten years into the overall meals and teaching provision.

Oliver also called for someone to direct policy for the coming decade. "Why isn't there a minister of food?" he asked the panel. "Why isn't there someone from the private sector all over this like a rash?" he asked. "Why haven't we got one person driving this for the next ten years?"

Tory leader David Cameron may have urged us to "hug a hoodie", but it seems that this touchy-feely approach could in fact be the missing piece in the school-dinner uptake puzzle.

While Jamie Oliver has been making headlines once again, slamming the Government for a lack of investment in the school meals system, and caterers themselves are still kicking up a fuss about the new nutrition-based standards, the bods at Surrey school meals may have a simpler, more cost-effective solution to the problem.

A recent pilot at ten schools in Surrey saw new starters at primary level offered free school meals for a week to entice more children to use the service.

But, put simply the uplift from this initative was disappointing.

However, before schools minister Ed Balls thinks he's found the perfect reason to dismiss the Food for Life Partnership's calls for free school meals for all, an insider at Surrey has a quite different take on why the caterers literally couldn't give the stuff away.

It's because the children are missing their mummies. Aaaahhhhhh!

"My own daughter was the same when she went to school, which was of course the first time she'd been away from home. She found it all so traumatic at first that she simply wouldn't eat very much at all for the first few weeks."

So, a hug as well as healthy grub to boost school dinner uptake. Bet Jamie Oliver never envisioned that one.

School meals round-up>>

Today, another kids' food angst story in the paper, as one school in Cardiganshire in west Wales bans Marmite for children's breakfasts - slamming it as too salty.

We all know Marmite has salt in it, but you only put a tiny bit on a piece of toast and if the rest of your diet is balanced I'm convinced no harm will come of it. Surely the generations of Marmite babies who love the brown sticky stuff are testament to this?

It seems Cater Link has impressed the good people at Camden Council in London as it's set for an an extention to its initial three-year school meals contract.

The caterer, which is part of the same stable that owns business and industry caterer BaxterStorey, was appointed in 2006 after parent protests forced out Compass Group's Scolarest from the £2.5m a year contract.

With the new nutritional  standards coming into force at primary schools this summer and plenty of challenges remaining at secondary level, hospitality magazine Caterer is running a School Meals Survey to tie in with its Education Month in July. So if you're a caterer with views on school meals share them.

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With the school term set to start Kitchen Rat has heard rumblings that 1920's style American prohibition practices could become reality in England with sugary snacks - about to be outlawed other than at lunch times - the new alcohol.

Yes in future years it seems school leavers will reminisce about knowing Jimmy the Fist and William the Kid (literally) who saw an opportunity and earned so much selling cakes and such at break-times that they no longer needed pocket money.

Certainly at least one school is apparently intending to hide banned cakes and sugary snacks under the counter when the Ofsted inspectors call, although there are fears over whether the pupils will keep stum.

With enterprising want-to-be Al Capone's doing rather nicely in the playground supplying illicit sugary goods one suspects there will be plenty of children ready to spill the beans to the inspectors and speak-easy to protect their share of the market.

School caterers vs children vs the authorities. Just what have we set in motion in the name of healthy eating?

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Unintended laugh of last week's LACA conference came from posh Prue Leith, a speaker there and chairman of the School Food Trust (SFT).

Towards the end of the first morning's session a question and answer spot featuring the SFT got very heated as the school catering delegates voiced their frustrations with the prescriptive changes being made to the system and perceived lack of support.

Leith cunningly launched into an anecdote about a group of young pupils she had met in the past that had undertaken a 13-week course on how to bake biscuits.

Don’t shoot the messenger! Prue Leith and Judy Hargadon should have shouted over the din at last week’s Local Authority Caterers Association conference.

The chairman and chief executive of the School Food Trust (SFT), the body set up by the Government to put the new school food standards into practice, were given a bashing in the question and answer (Q&A) spot that closed the morning session on the first day.

Things got rather heated when delegates realised Leith’s earlier briefing essentially meant that although they will have more flexibility to spend the £240m of funding due from 2008 they won’t be getting any additional handouts from Government to ease pressure on the struggling school meals service.

With LACA’s latest figures suggesting secondary school meal uptake has dive bombed to an all-time low of 35% and that 65% of local authority catering departments are in deficient, this was not what any delegate wanted to hear.