Lock in pupils at lunchtime to make them eat healthy food, says top cook Prue Leith

Schools should lock children in at lunchtime to boost take-up of canteen meals, a catering expert claimed yesterday.

Prue Leith said if pupils were allowed off-site they were likely to buy chips and other unhealthy food.

She urged heads to put aside worries that parents would accuse them of infringing children's rights.

The renowned cook and restaurateur spoke as she backed a campaign to encourage a million more children to eat healthy school dinners.

Up to 400,000 pupils have deserted school meals since TV chef Jamie Oliver launched his crusade to banish junk food from canteen menus.

Miss Leith is chairman of the School Food Trust set up by ministers to help schools implement Oliver-inspired curbs on fat, sugar and salt.

In a speech, she urged heads to improve children's experience of lunchtimes to encourage them to choose healthy meals.

Scroll down for more...

Some youngsters were forced to queue for 20 minutes in 'noisy and unpleasant' dining halls, she said.

She added that heads should also consider barring pupils from leaving the school premises to prevent them buying food from takeaway outlets.

"We are saying to heads, 'look at the dining environment, make the lunch hour longer or stagger classes – there are lots of ways of doing this'.

"One of the things that is stopping children having school dinners is the fact there is a chippy just down the road.

"Head teachers tend to think it is not their business to tell children where to go to lunch.

Scroll down for more...

"They are a bit nervous of parents thinking, 'You are infringing my child's right'." However, schools which had consulted parents before introducing locked-gate policies had found most were supportive, she said.

Miss Leith, who wrote the Cookery Bible and set up her own catering school, admitted school meals costing £2 represented a 'hefty' financial drain on some families but pointed out that many schools offered subsidies.

She also suggested parents could dock pocket money to meet the cost.

In an interview with BBC Radio Four's Today programme, she added: "The average pocket money a child gets is £8.40 and even in primary school most children get £1 a day to spend on the way to school.

"Wouldn't it be better if that money went on school dinners rather than chocolate bars and fizzy drinks?"

The trust's 'million meals' campaign aims to increase the numbers eating school meals from the current 3.2million.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls said: "It is a huge change to improve the quality of food and the healthiness of it.

"That kind of change takes time but we are not giving up."