A dinner lady has resigned from her job at an English school in protest at the quality of the school meals she was forced to serve to young children, it emerged on Wednesday.
Kate Steggles, 40, said it broke her heart to serve processed peas and powdered potatoes to pupils at Newton Ferrers primary school, near Plymouth in the far south-west of the country.
Her resignation came as the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver launched a debate on improving British school dinners with a new television series, which began last night.
Steggles, who became a dinner lady at the school in September last year, said she had attempted to introduce fresh ingredients.
Within weeks of starting work, she had negotiated a cost-price contract with a local farmer to buy eggs and potatoes. She served fresh milk, introduced wholemeal pasta and fresh fruit salad, and baked her own flapjacks and crumbles with oats, sunflower seeds and locally grown apples.
She said: "You do not need to unzip a packet, you can cook something in virtually the same time with the same money."
"It just takes thinking about -- the food doesn't have to be organic, it just has to be real," she said.
"I resigned because I morally could not serve the food the children were technically meant to be having, because it broke my heart," she said.
She said the children deserved better and the parents should be demanding better meals.
With the backing of her headteacher, Claire Sealey, Steggles had approached the education authority -- Devon county council -- on several occasions to ask if she could source more local ingredients, but claims her comments were not met with any enthusiasm.
She added: "I never realized I would be so restricted by rules and regulations."
A spokesman for the school said talks about improving school meals were already under way.
"The school has been working closely with Devon Direct Services, which provides the meals, to improve the quality and nutritional value," he said. "Headteacher Claire Sealey and her governing body are fully behind the recent Devon county council review which is working towards reducing the salt, fat and sugar content in all school meals and sourcing more produce locally."
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