Big Nibbles asks what Thatcher changed on the school tray
Pie and cabbage give way to burgers and chips in a food-history follow-up to his Jamie Oliver video.
Big Nibbles
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 688,166 views a day, 7.7 times a normal first day on this channel (89,518).
Did Margaret Thatcher Ruin School Lunch?
Jamie Oliver wasn't the beginning of this story. Big Nibbles' follow-up to "Did Jamie Oliver Ruin School Lunch?" goes further back, cooking two school dinners to examine what changed under Margaret Thatcher.
The first tray represents 1970: meat pie, mashed potatoes, cabbage, pineapple in custard and a glass of milk. Wearing his sandwich apron, the host cooks and tastes the meal rather than leaving the history as a list of policies. "Pie and mash, you can't go wrong," he says.
Then the milk disappears from the story. He explains Thatcher's decision as education secretary to end free milk for older primary school children in 1971, before moving to her government's removal of national nutritional requirements for school meals in 1980.
His second tray makes the contrast visible: a processed burger, chips, baked beans, a muffin and a sugary soft drink. The host's verdict is that children weren't better off after deregulation. It's a pointed argument made through two plates, not a claim that every school served exactly these meals.
"Did Margaret Thatcher Ruin School Lunch?" reached roughly 360,000 views in nine hours, already well beyond the channel's usual full-day Shorts audience. The comments also contain a useful complication: alongside memories of burgers, viewers recall cooked dinners, vegetables and potatoes lasting into later decades. School lunch didn't change everywhere at once.
Published on Trari
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- Channel
- Big Nibbles
- Subscribers
- 1,180,000 ▲ 10,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 13,185,410
- Channel views, pace per day
- 728,764 (on a normal day: 1,598,701)
- Video published
- October 20, 2026
- Video views so far
- 362,495 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 688,166
The numbers
The Thatcher Short has already passed Big Nibbles' usual first-day views, with only nine hours online.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which chef was the subject of Big Nibbles' preceding school-lunch video?
His preceding school-lunch upload was titled "Did Jamie Oliver Ruin School Lunch?"