Keep menus simple, buy seasonal ingredients, and campaign to make cookery lessons a compulsory part of the school curriculum - that was the message from Gordon Ramsay to delegates at the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) conference in Birmingham last week.
Ramsay said that he understood the restrictions of cooking to tight budgets, but he was convinced that great meals could still be achieved by keeping dishes simple and using fresh, seasonal ingredients.
"Sometimes," he said, "we've lost the plot in overcomplicating cooking for children. Fast food doesn't have to be junk food if you use fresh, seasonal ingredients."
Delegates applauded his call for cookery lessons to be compulsory. "Even if they don't decide to go on and cook for a living," he said, "learning how to cook for yourself, understanding you are what you eat, and the importance of eating well from an early age are absolutely crucial."
Children need to smell and handle fresh food on trips to street markets, and cookery lessons must be made exciting and not dogmatic, Ramsay told delegates.
As an example, he described the excitement he saw generated by showing a live sturgeon to children at a Glasgow school.
Parents need to help their children to learn table manners as a key to developing social skills, he added. "It's sad when you see the diminishing value of what it is to have a school meal," he said.
"They can't eat properly and understand the table manners - how to sit upright, how to use a knife and fork properly, how to drink a glass of water, how to leave the knife and fork. All these things are part of an education that gets taken for granted."
By Ben Walker