Around one in five people are now spending their hard-earned cash on food that is good for them, PruHealth found.

Moreover, only one in seven people said that a lack of money was preventing them from eating better, and one person in five said that the Channel Four series Jamie’s School Dinners had inspired them to change their eating habits.

“By focusing the nutrition debate on schools Jamie has, perhaps unwittingly, done something very clever. He’s found a way of educating people about the benefits of healthy eating, and the dangers of eating junk, in a way which isn’t patronising or hectoring and is motivating,” commented Rosan Meyer, dietician and private medical insurer for PruHealth.

“Our research shows that some of those messages are having a real impact on the population at large. Jamie’s School Dinners is probably the cleverest piece of public health education we’ve had in many years.”

Time, rather than money, seems to be the main barrier to healthy eating: one in three people said they lacked the time to prepare fresh, nutritious food.

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