TWO Bromsgrove mums are at the heart of a healthy eating campaign aimed at school lunch boxes across the county, writes Paul Francis.

Mos Bradley and Angela Williams have become pioneers in the drive to find alternatives to the fizzy drinks and crisps diet blamed for a nationwide rise in health problems and obesity. Their aim is to delve into the contents of children's lunch boxes in 22 first schools across Worcestershire and offer advice on how to make them healthier.

The scheme started three years ago when the two parent governors were asked to take on a similar task at Stoke Prior First School - but they had no idea it would lead them to Westminster and the forefront of a county-wide campaign.

"We have six children between us so we know the problems of providing food in lunch boxes," said Mos, from Dark Lane, Stoke Heath. "Because of the good practices we helped develop at Stoke Prior, we were asked to take it further."

Their programme of work and events proved so successful that more initiatives followed and last October they were invited to the Westminster Diet and Health Forum. "It was a very prestigious event," Mos said. "There were a lot of Government ministers and we gave them our views."

The 44-year-old has a cookery background and still teaches food technology one day a week at South Bromsgrove high. She also used her own experiences of struggling with lunch for her four children, Edward, aged 12, Olivia, nine, and seven-year-old twins Matthew and James, to help devise programmes for schools and other parents to follow.

Angela, from Avoncroft Road, Stoke Heath, has two children, 13-year-old Laura and Hannah, 11, and is a teaching assistant in Tardebigge.

The Great Grub Project, launched in January, is backed by the Children's Fund and is due to run until 2006. It takes the pair into schools with the aim of setting up a 12-strong local task force to carry on their work.

"We don't just go in to do a makeover," Mos said. "We do an audit and then try and set up something that is sustainable. We need the help of teachers and parents and the children themselves."