A few months on from the great School Dinners debate and little is being done to ensure that British children eat well at school. That's the opinion of chef Jamie Oliver who did so much to spark the debate in the first place.

Writing in the political magazine The House, Oliver says that on a recent trip to South Africa he found better school meals being prepared in the country's poorest township than he would expect to find here in the UK. 'It completely astounded me that in a place of unbelievable poverty, the love and care put into children's meals was greater than in Inner London - and resulted in a more nutritionally balanced lunch.

'If they can do it, there's absolutely no reason why we can't,' he said. 'Our friends across the world are amazed that a proud country such as ours can have such little regard for the health and wellbeing of its children.'

Oliver poured scorn on the government for letting the issue slip from its main agenda. 'I've met enough government people to know that the easiest thing in the world is to say a lot of grand, headline-grabbing words and then conveniently forget all about any commitments, often blaming someone else for the resulting failure,' he argued.

• Related Feature - School Dinners: Out Of Sight But Eating Well
• Related News - Jamie Oliver's Double Trouble
• This week's news