Jamie Oliver has had some success transforming the way UK schools feed our children and now he wants to show the US how to feed their children. Jamie’s got his bad points but he’s pretty much a hero in my opinion. OK, so we might see him as being in the pocket of the big supermarkets but his heart is undoubtedly in the right place. If Jamie can persuade people that children can and do like vegetables then he will have done well.

I’m not at all sure how we reached this place where it’s just assumed that children don’t like veg. It seems quite strange to me, I always had more trouble getting them to eat meat! I suppose I was dealing with children who had mostly started off as vegetarian and been weaned onto vegetable solids. My bible was Rose Elliot’s Vegetarian Mother and Baby, I’d read Let’s Have Healthy Children (out of print and not that accurate) and I had a few tricks up my sleeve. Veggies make great weaning finger foods (carrots are obvious but try sticks of celariac or fennel!), mashed avacado is just about a perfect weaning food, and once they are a little bit older salad or pizza faces that they decorate themselves will usually be demolished in double quick time.

Vegetable box

Anyway, listen to what Jamie has to say and then take another look at what came in this week’s vegetable box and see what you can do to make it attractive to your kids. If you are stuck for ideas just leave a comment and I’ll try to come up with something.

Supermarkets now sell more than 70 per cent of organic produce in the UK — but, having done well in the organic boom, they are now bearing the brunt of the decline. According to Soil Association surveys, it is “barcode” sales of organic that are falling. Farmers’ markets, farm shops and box schemes are still all doing OK.