GET GROWING SCHOOL FOOD MATTERS
What prompted you to set up the charity?
I founded the charity in 2007. I founded it because I put my children in the local primary school after living abroad in Australia and when I walked into this rated outstanding primary school in London the first thing I heard was the office manager say, sorry about the smell, that's lunch!
It was the most appalling food and not only in our school but across the whole London borough. So, I hadn't realised I was setting up a charity, it was just a grassroots campaign if you like that has grown year on year.
It was in the same breath really that I heard a headteacher at a primary school in Hackney say that children at his school couldn't identify an onion – not an aubergine or an artichoke, or anything exotic, but a humble onion. It confirmed my suspicion that there was this awful disconnect between food and where it comes from.
I started looking at food education. I'd always grown up around fruit and veg – I was very lucky. I grew up in Birmingham and we always had