Jamie started it

More than twenty years ago, Jamie Oliver's campaigning got Turkey Twizzlers and chocolate concrete cake pulled from school menus. That fight set the template for what is coming next.

No more deep fryer

From next September, schools in England are banned from serving any deep-fried food. Fish and chips, the Friday fixture, has to be rebuilt.

“From next September, schools in England will no longer be allowed to serve deep-fried foods.”

Lentils, weekly

Menus must carry wholegrains and pulses like lentils and chickpeas alongside main options at least once a week. Veg or salad has to come with, or be cooked into, every main.

Pudding needs fruit

Sweetened baked desserts get cut back under the first new school food standards in over a decade. What survives has to contain fruit or be served with it.

Pizza on a leash

Sugary drinks and ice cream are restricted, and foods high in fat and salt, pizza included, are limited. The target is childhood obesity and tooth decay.

Chocolate concrete and pink custard

A crisp cocoa traybake of flour, sugar, butter and cocoa, drowned in custard dyed pink with strawberry blancmange powder. Some schools went mint green instead.

“Why have normal custard when you could make it pink?”

Turkey Twizzlers

Axed in 2005 after Oliver's Feed Me Better campaign revealed they were just 34 per cent meat. A healthier relaunch arrived in 2020 and was discontinued in 2025.

“even 20 years later, still declare that Jamie will 'never be forgiven'”

Fairy cake

Light vanilla sponge, white icing, rainbow sprinkles. The bake sale currency of every primary school, and easy enough that it never left home kitchens.

“Nostalgia in a bake”

Liver and onions

A staple from the 1960s to the 1980s and the most divisive thing on the list. Tart beef or lamb liver, slow-cooked onions, mashed potato. You either still crave it or still flinch.

Turkey dinosaurs

Breadcrumbed, extinct-shaped, beloved. Food researchers say a quarter of UK households have now dropped them from the shopping list entirely.

Cowboy pie

Cottage pie rewired with pork sausages, baked beans, BBQ sauce and onions, then topped with mash and cheese. Built to get a child through double maths.

Cornflake tart

Shortcrust pastry, a layer of strawberry jam, cornflakes bound in golden syrup on top. Served with a heavy pour of custard, and still being recreated online.

“brighten up your Friday night”

Cheese flan

Savoury custard in shortcrust, four ingredients, cut into squares. Not a quiche, and usually landed on the tray next to chips and a scoop of potato.

Pasta King

Still served in schools, but the 2000s cult status is gone. Arrabbiata to carbonara, widely complained about for being watery, eaten anyway.

Spam fritters

Spam deep fried in batter, born of the Second World War fish shortage and carried into canteens, chippies and supermarkets. The new rules kill this one outright.

Fish fingers and smiley faces

Friday lunch, with potato smiley faces and beans or peas. Peas went in the eyes of the faces, which was the whole point.

Jam roly-poly

Steamed suet pastry rolled around sticky raspberry jam, with a bowl of warm custard alongside. Menu-day excitement, and still selling as a retro pudding.

Arctic roll

Vanilla ice cream wrapped in sponge, the cold cousin of the roly-poly. Like Viennetta, it is quietly back on supermarket shelves.

Blancmange

Milk, cream and sugar thickened into a moulded jelly, sometimes flavoured with almonds. A dinner party showpiece, often shaped like a rabbit, that wobbled its way into the canteen.

Spaghetti hoops on toast

The wet winter alternative to beans on toast, upgraded with grated cheese if you had any sense. Cheap, hot, and enough on a frosty lunchtime.