Many of you may already be aware that the School Meals Review Panel published its report, Turning the Tables: Transforming School Food to a rather muted fanfare last week.

The review panel was set up in May 2005 by Education Secretary Ruth Kelly to address the rising levels of obesity and other diet-related illnesses in the nation’s children, fuelled in part by an increase in public demand for a change to school meals in the wake of the popular television programme, Jamie’s Dinners, featuring celebrity-chef-turned-school-meals-activist Jamie Oliver.

Ministers in England and Wales promised a £220m package to improve school meals provision in the wake of the programme, broadcast in April. As the more cynical among you may note, this was a mere few weeks before the General Election.

Figures released days after the report was published already suggest that there will be a £266m shortfall in funding for all the review panel’s recommendations to be implemented, with the panel’s chair, Suzi Leather, admitting, “There is clearly a gap between what [accountants] have told us about the cost and what the government has publicly committed.”

The cost of school dinners is also likely to increase, with lower income parents expected to feel the impact most acutely. Oliver’s activism may have done more harm than good.

Members of the BHA who provide school meals have long complained about the paltry resources available to spend on food and ingredients. While we acknowledge that growing public and political awareness will force the Government to move to take further action on school meals, there is still a shortfall of active involvement in other areas, and the promise of too much involvement in others.

The Department of Health estimates £500m is spent on hospital food in England each year, with National Health Service providing 300 million meals – working out at £1.67 per meal. Five years ago, £40m was pledged to improve meals in the National Health Service.

As part of the high profile campaign, Masterchef presenter Lloyd Grossman was invited to head a panel of chefs to find ways to improve hospital food. At the time, Grossman was quoted as saying: “It is not a gimmick, it is not a celebrity exercise, it is not a joke, it is not trivial – it is incredibly important to a lot of people.”

Quite right. But five years on from the initiative’s launch, little has changed. The menus designed by Grossman and his panel of chefs at £2 per meal were deemed too expensive for the NHS, and save for some initial trials in a number of hospitals, the menus were largely abandoned.

Menus in restaurants, however, have come under scrutiny of the Food Standards Agency, with nutritional labeling being considered again under the current climate.

While it seems unlikely that this policy would receive the support of Jamie Oliver, a precedent has been set in the US, with the introduction of a MEAL (Menu Education and Labeling Act) bill to the House of Representatives, which would require all chain restaurants to provide four nutritional details beside every item on their menu. The potential cost to industry of such a proposal would be phenomenal.

Government’s view of the healthly-eating issue is, at the moment, decidedly unfocused.

It is essential that the Government pledges more money to provide the young, the disabled, the elderly and infirm with a balanced and nutritional diet, and engaging in a proper process of education which will allow the consumer to make the right choices when dining out.

Turning the Tables: Transforming School Food, the School Meals Review Panel report, can be viewed at www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations or can be ordered on +44 (0)845 60 222 60