Jamie Oliver broke down the school kitchen door, overturned the chip frier and threw out the Turkey Twizzlers. Now Prue Leith, celebrity chef and catering legend for an earlier generation, has been handed the task of ensuring the healthy eating crusade remains on track, whatever the temptations of the fast-food take-aways down the road.
In January she takes the chair of the School Food Trust, the government-funded body charged with improving the quality of food in schools.
"This is the most important job I have ever had and I cannot wait to start work," said the businesswoman whose companies, Leith's Good Food, Michelin-starred Leith's restaurant, and Leith's School of Food and Wine, made over £15m a year when she sold them in 1995.
"Convincing young people, parents, teachers and caterers of the importance of good food is essential if we want our children to grow up healthy and energetic," she added.
This term saw new laws determining healthy menus schools in England must offer in canteens, the first stage in the response to the Naked Chef's assault. Tougher nutrient standards are on the way. Salty, sugary snacks and fizzy drinks are being removed from vending machines, although a total cull is not compulsory until next September.
There have been signs of a dip in school meal take-up thanks to the so-called Jamie Oliver effect, most recently in a BBC poll of secondary schools, but campaigners believe pupils can be wooed back.
Ms Leith won an open competition for the job - she was one of three people interviewed - and her comments will delight those who want more practical cooking lessons alongside food theory. "I believe we can change attitudes through the trust's mission to help schools teach every pupil about food and nutrition and give them cooking lessons," she said.
The author of 12 cookbooks, she said the main disappointment of the government reforms was a failure to make such lessons compulsory. "If I could wave my wand, I would have every child learning to cook. We have missed a whole generation - mums and dads who can't cook because they were not taught at school. We haven't got to where we'd like to be, but at least we are halfway there. I will give it my best shot to go farther and faster."
She is a consultant to Compass, a company involved in supplying school meals, but does not advise it in that area and is giving up much of her charitable work to devote herself to her new job, which pays £15,000 a year.
Alan Johnson, the education secretary, recently promised that every school must offer the opportunity for cooking lessons by 2013 and that the food technology curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds will become more practical five years before that.
