ONE of the region's MPs has gone back to school to discover ways of making school meals healthy.

Bishop Auckland MP Helen Goodman yesterday sat down for dinner at Staindrop Comprehensive School.

Mrs Goodman is one of the six sponsors of the Children's Food Bill - a private members' bill which has been launched this week - National School Meals Week.

The bill aims to ban the marketing of unhealthy food to children and improve food education.

Staindrop Comprehensive has recently decided to cater for its meals in-house and has banned sugary, fatty and salty foods from its menus.

Mrs Goodman spoke to school chef Guy Middleton, headteacher Brian Kinnair and the chairwoman of the governors, Ruth Renton, about how they are coping since the change, the cost of the meals, children's reactions and what difficulties they foresee.

She said: "Obesity is a growing problem with children and we need them to eat more healthily.

"The Government's proposals to improve school food and remove unhealthy foods from school vending machines are good news for children's health, but even more needs to be done to address increasing rates of childhood obesity.

"It's really good to see here at Staindrop the children's behaviour has improved since the new menu came in."

Mr Kinnair said the big challenge would be to see if the new school meals system could run without making a loss.

However, he added the school would not be going back to the meals it had before. More than 20 top chefs and food writers wrote to Tony Blair this week to ask him to back the Children's Food Bill, including Gary Rhodes, Nigel Slater and Anthony Worrall Thompson.