Prue Leith: ‘There's no reason for ultra-processed foods'

When Dame Prue Leith moved from South Africa to the UK in the 1960s to study at the Cordon Bleu Cookery School there was a dearth of good food available. It is fair to say that in the 50 years since British food has become much more exciting and inspiring. 'For the rich,' asserts the 85-year-old chef and broadcaster.
That is in no small part due to her influence; generations of professional chefs and amateur cooks have passed through the doors of Leith's School of Food and Wine. But she has also worked tirelessly through her various charitable positions to improve the food lives of the very poorest in society. It is fair to say it has been a slog.
Her many successes have sadly been greatly outweighed by the overall state of the nation's dietary health today. A shocking 67 per cent of daily energy intake for 14-year-olds in the UK is made up of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) – industrially processed foods full of additives, sugar, salt and fat while lacking whole ingredients and dietary fibre.
'You just look at the statistics and the gap between rich and poor has grown steadily,' says Leith.
We are talking ahead of a celebration event at the City Hall for the 15th anniversary of Food For Life Served Here. Currently, more than 6,500 caterers hold the Soil Association's Food for Life Served Here certification, across a variety of sectors from hospitals and schools, to private workplaces and visitor attractions.
With an emphasis on fresh and unprocessed ingredients, caterers must regularly assess their menu to see that 75 per cent or more of the food they serve is cooked from scratch.
As chair of the School Food Trust Leith has long advocated that Food for Life Served Here should be a model for how school food is done.
Twenty years ago she laid the groundwork for the initiative during a lunch with the late Lord Peter Melchett, Policy Director at the Soil Association. While chairman of the Royal Society of Arts, Leith had founded Focus on Food, a charity that taught children to cook at school.
The Soil Association meanwhile had Food for Life, which was teaching children to grow food: 'We just thought, you know, we should put these two things together,' recalls Leith.
'At first, we both thought that the two organisations wouldn't get on together. My lot thought, 'Oh my God, the Soil Association! They are a lot of green sandal wearing guys.' Anyway, of course they got on like a house on fire. And it has been running brilliantly ever since.'
While its achievements are admirable – more than a million Food for Life Served Here certified meals are served in the UK every day and its schools programme currently reaches 250,000 children across the UK – they remain modest in the face of the bigger picture.
Yet the solution is obvious to Leith.
'I feel so strongly that the most important thing we should be doing is getting a whole generation of children in school to love good food. To actually want to eat it.
'They would then go on wanting to eat it all their lives and then they'd teach their children how to do it. And we would solve the bloody obesity problem. We'd save the NHS. That would all happen.'
This is not some new revelation: 'I've been saying the same thing for 50 years.' During that time she has also witnessed a lot of apathy from government. She recalls one encounter with a health minister years ago where she attempted to persuade him to invest in feeding children healthy food in schools.
'I told him how there's a lot of evidence that they learn better. If they're eating healthily then exam results go up. And he said, 'Why would I do that? If I put kitchens into schools, that would cost a lot of money and the benefit would not be for my department, it would be to the NHS.''
Repeatedly she has found that if it is not in the immediate financial interests of the person in charge, be it at government, council, or school head, then it is a low priority.
It is an attitude that contrasts sharply with that of countries like Japan where nutrition is taken seriously in schools and each has a resident nutritionist. There are strict laws about not allowing processed foods to be used.
'The statistic that's stuck in my head is that 43 per cent of Americans are clearly obese, compared with 4 per cent of Japanese and falling. In Britain it's something like 38 per cent.'
It is 20 years since Jamie's School Dinners aired on television, where Jamie Oliver worked in partnership with Food For Life to show how terrible they were. Back then the nation was horrified by Turkey Twizzlers, and equally the attitude of some parents who pushed fish and chips through the fences to their 'starving' children.
Have things improved since then?
'Oh yes, certainly. Most schools at least feel badly about if they haven't got it right. But it will all depend on the head. If the headteacher thinks food is good for education and will help his or her League Tables, then they will put some effort and energy into it. And once you see a teacher who cares it's remarkable what they can do on the same budget.'
She recalls a boys' Academy in Sheffield where the headteacher ruled that every student would have a school lunch every day. 'The chef said the only way he could afford to do it was to go vegetarian. I went in and I couldn't believe it, it looked like Ottolenghi! There were all these wonderful salads, lentils, guacamole. The children were filling their own tacos. It was delicious. I asked how can you afford pomegranate and paw paw. And he said 'I can buy all of that for less than I can buy even the cheapest meat'. On Fridays they would have fish, for their brains. They only got chips once a month. And all the kids loved it because they were hungry, and there was no other option so they would try stuff. And once they tried it they got to like it.
'That's the lovely thing about good food. Once you like a flavour, you like it for life. You don't unlike things, you just add more.'
Pupils in Food for Life schools are twice as likely to eat their five-a-day than pupils in comparison schools. Even parents with the resources will attest that the greatest battle is getting children to try healthy food. Leith herself knows only too well. Her own son – now a Conservative MP in his 50s – spent his entire youth refusing to eat vegetables.
'I didn't worry too much because he ate a lot of fruit and he ate frozen peas.' He changed very rapidly when he got to the age of going to other friends' houses. 'He said: 'Mum, I have to learn to eat veg because it's embarrassing. I'm hiding things under things or having to put them in my turn ups,'' laughs Leith.
Experience has shown her that school dinners work best when everyone has them. It takes the pressure off of parents to make packed lunches, and when the child gets to lunch time they are hungry.
'One school I know ended up giving sliced apples or carrot sticks at break. When kids are hungry they'll try stuff.'
A 2016 study by Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab found that fruit consumption jumped by more than 60 per cent when apples were served sliced. Leith jokes: 'If I want my husband to eat oranges I have to cut them up for him. But all of that in schools costs money.'
The shift to seeing food as medicine worth investing in is already happening she says in hospitals. 'Matt Hancock was a very good health minister. He commissioned a report to know what was wrong with hospital food and why it couldn't be fixed. And we came up with eight recommendations, all of which the government accepted,' explains Leith. 'The Treasury coughed up some money and all of it is happening slowly. More and more Hospital Trusts are taking it seriously.'
When it comes to schools, she is against rolling out a one-size fits all schools solution, because: 'It's boring when you're cooking what you're told to cook.' Instead what is needed is to get talent into schools. 'Lots of chefs in schools are absolutely terrific,' she says.
Her judgement on what constitutes processed and how strictly meals should be produced to be considered healthy, has relaxed. While she would personally never eat in a pub with a food distribution company Brakes – formerly Brakes Brothers – van outside, she admits to having had 'a lot of prejudice' about how food should be produced in institutions such as hospitals.
'I felt strongly that it has to be done on site, but I've changed my mind about that. As long as it's cooked from scratch it doesn't matter if it was done in a factory or a central hub. As long as they start with real ingredients and don't put any processed rubbish like emulsifiers in, it can still be packed, frozen and sent.'
Leith is a huge fan of frozen food, both home-made and bought. The distinction should be about how many ingredients are in there that shouldn't be. Or ingredients that are not real ingredients. 'I am a big fan of asking whether your Granny would recognise the ingredient,' she says. There's no real reason for UPFs. Most food doesn't need that longevity.'
In spite of all her years watching worthy initiatives take seed only to slowly wither due to lack of funding and government support, she remains optimistic that change is possible. 'So many charities are doing such a good job,' she says.
However, she adds: 'I still think it's criminal that the government sits back and does nothing except patting charities on the head and saying, 'Aren't you good, we do support you.' No, they don't. They never give them any money.'
It is time for government to realise how important good quality food and healthy eating is.
'But f--- it. Japan's done it and Finland's done it, why can't we?'

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