UK pea growers and processors are rounding off the second phase of this year's jointly funded £100,000 promotional fight back campaign with a UK-wide health blitz in schools.

Public health minister, Hazel Blears, raised the campaign's profile this month when she praised its efforts to urge secondary school teen-chefs to tempt primary school children to eat their five-a-day.

Blears said: 'This campaign has proved that with a bit of imagination you can make healthy school dinners that young people will want to eat. I hope that lots of schools will take up the winning menu ideas.' Regional judging panels of dieticians, teachers and caterers whittled entries down to a shortlist for school menus to be judged by juries of primary school children.

The project to save the pea with its theme 'all we are saying is, give peas a chance' targeted the food service industry in its first phase earlier this year.

All major pub and restaurant chains were contacted in a campaign pitting them against one another to find the UK's best 'greens cuisine.' This focused on vegetables instead of the usual fare of burgers, bangers and mash.

Processed Vegetable Growers' Association, chief executive, Martin Riggall, said: 'This is the second year of our national campaign to promote peas as part of advice by health bodies urging us to include five portions of fruit and veg in our daily diet. We did this in the first year by publicising the creative use of peas in adventurous and novel recipes - as used by top TV chefs like Antony Worral Thompson and Sophie Grigson. This year we went direct to the catering industry and tomorrow's consumers via schools.'

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