To think that free breakfast at school is a bad idea due to the quality?

If you only know one person with diabetes presumably you don’t know all that many people? diabetes is super common. Many people have it for a long time without realising they have it and the incidence is increasing significantly. Do you know anyone who is overweight or obese?

I've had the porridge they serve in the nurseries and schools here, its fine, not as good as when its made with milk of course but perfectly fine with some fruit compote (which was what they served it with, not syrup).

I didn't like it when they served it for lunch at my school though - porridge is definitely not a lunch food!

I'm on the fence regarding "good" food.
I say that as a trained cordon bleu Cook and a person who has always eaten well from childhood to adulthood.

At primary, private, school lunches were great.

At grammar school state, 1971, typical school lunches were:

Beef cobbler with vegetables and mashed potato
Liver and bacon with vegetable and mashed potato
Egg salad, an egg and a bit of grated cheese accompanied by a lettuce leaf on which there was a slice of tomato, a slice of cucumber and half a dozen pieces of cress with mashed potato
A roast - meat of some description, roast potatoes, veg and gravy
Fish (grey) in slimy and thin parsley sauce, mash and peas

Puddings were - puddings, stodgy, jam covered, fruit crumbles, dead fly pie, etc with custard or ice cream.

Sounds great doesn't it but if I describe the beef cobbler for example: gristly, grey meat swimming in watery gravy with globules of fat and a bit of disintegrating swede or turnip, topped with rock hard orange scone, watery cabbage and mashed potato, lumpy with black eyes, you get the message. Other meals could be similarly described. There were occasional things that were OK, for example: cheese, egg and bacon pie but not often.

Custards were processed and often coloured brown or pink, ice-cream was the cheapest available, crumbles were welded.

It was more or less inedible and aged 11, 12, 13 I recall being so hungry in the afternoons, stinging still from the lectures about the starving in India.

Frankly, chips and nuggets would have at least been edible and would have filled me up for the afternoon. I don't think I ever saw a piece of freah fruit being available or a vegetable other than Carrots, cabbage and peas.

Thankfully at third form, due to pressure from parents, we were allowed to take a packed lunch and mealtimes improved. I had a flask of soup or hot chocolate, a cheese or ham sandwich and an apple or an orange packed by my mother.

If school food is to be good, then the budgets need to be adequate - it costs.

Regarding dental health, genetically my first teeth were not good, some people's aren't. Look at the late Queen Mother and she was hardly deprived. DD's baby teeth were shocking - she had to have four molars extracted, aged 4. Not due to diet but because I had pleurisy at about 18 weeks pregnant and had to have strong, intravenous anti-biotics. It coincided with the development of the second molars.

Also loving all the suggestions for porridge. I expect those suggesting it imagine it made carefully for four servings with a little milk and water, gold top for the top, some quality cherries or berries and a little honey. It won't be. It will be like gloop or thick and lumpy with a bit of cheap processed syrup if the children are lucky. In the workhouse it was called gruel.

Oh it’s definitely neglectful and lazy. My parents never had money when I was growing up and were younger They always made sure I had food and was clean

Box of cereal is about 80p and milk is cheap too. Up until recently I was jobless and young (under 25s get a lot less benefits than over 25s look up the difference it's quite big) my kids always had breakfast what excuse do these older people have 🤔 dusty and neglectful losers and I don't know if breakfast club is even the solution because the people I know like this aren't getting their kids to school for lesson start time let alone even earlier for a breakfast club.

It isn't just high sugar diets and poor dental hygiene that cause dental issues. Other underlying health conditions that aren't diet related can have a massive impact on the heath and strength of your teeth.

Definitely this.

The father was quite clearly delusional.
The cobblers usually do have the worst shoes.

But you used your kids skin and teeth as proof of your superiority which is rubbish. My kids went to school with a dentists son. He had fillings and his father told me it was a nightmare for him that his son had such poor dental enamel that whatever he did he couldn't keep his sons teeth healthy. If only he'd spoken to an expert like you.

I’ve worked for over 20 years researching and on the front lines of child poverty and you are wrong. Yes poverty is multi-factor, but the vast vast majority of parents love their kids and want to look after them properly. Why don’t you volunteer for a local charity serving the community you demonise and try to understand the appalling reality some people live in. What do you think is going to happen to a neglected and abused child when they have their own kids if there is no help or support to overcome childhood trauma?

I agree with you. I’ve seen enough examples of soggy cornflakes and cheap white bread toast being offered up. Surely it would be both cheaper and healthier to have a huge vat of porridge with a range of fruit toppings. Easy.

we should look to Japan on how to do it better

We shouldn’t have to feed kids in schools. Parents should be made responsible to feed their children. Surely appending every penny down the pub is neglect?

yeah... that was my thought. OP was astoundingly naive to write
children who have may had a relatively healthy breakfast at home may now opt eat UPFs at school with their pals instead.

The kids won't be choosing breakfast with pals instead, that won't be motivating, and they won't at baseline be having "healthy" breakfast at home.

Recently, Colleague did a series of workshops with urban teens from poorer backgrounds. Some of the teens appreciated free breakfast. They all turned noses up at free "healthy" lunch foods & went to McDs instead. Somehow they could afford that. Their baseline decision wasn't to choose free healthy food. If British primary schools only serve "healthy" foods then a lot of kids won't even eat it so won't have any breakfast and a lot of it will go in bin.

I'm having Flashback to after-school club in ~2008 trying to force my son to eat apple. He became furious & refused to ever go back. He already knew by then how much he didn't like apple but they wouldn't listen.

Agree, reduce the choices and they will eat the healthier breakfast in most cases (except arfid cases)

School breakfasts are way too unhealthy

cereal
toast
jam
juice

etc. a school breakfast provides over the daily sugar allowance fir children ( and I’m not a health freak etc)

sugsr sugar sugar. Will sound insulin and cause crash and cravings

should be egg /protein based

we should look to Japan on how to do it better

people used to be embarrassed to have not fed their children and embarrassed to not put shoes on their feet. Why aren’t people ashamed of that behaviour any more?

Totally agree. The reason? Someone always steps in, free lunches, free dinners, whilst parents languish at home. If they were starving they’d work. And I’m not taking about those that can’t, it’s those who won’t.

Id like the luxury of staying home all day … both go to work to feed the kids and have a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs.

You take people independence away, they see it as an entitlement.

You are welcome, any time!

My grand father was so poor as a child that he had cardboard in his boots to stop the holes letting in water. My dad had an outside toilet they shared with the family who had the top half of their terrace house in the east end. He shared a bed with his 2 sisters.

they were poor. Properly poor.

they were sent to school every day with eggs, bacon and toast. Never, ever nothing. And I dint think dripping.

Turkey dripping on toast with salt is the good of the gods however. Christmas Day breakfast 😍😍

This is where I feel it’s gone wrong, And I won’t comment on the thread of getting but people used to be embarrassed to have not fed their children and embarrassed to not put shoes on their feet. Why aren’t people ashamed of that behaviour any more?

My grandparents kept chickens and fed the children egg and soldiers in 1956. Post Warriors presumably it was more difficult during, But between the war even in central London, people kept chickens

IMO they shouldn’t be offering Rice Krispies and Cheerios and white bread.

For a lot of 'our Grandparents', breakfast was nothing at all or a piece of bread and dripping or jam whilst their father had bacon or sausages.

I'm assuming that Pain au Chocolat, croissants, bowls of hot chocolate, bread with ham, cheese and/or confitures, cornetto, granita, cappuccino, brioscia, panne, burro & marmaletta, etc, don't exist in your Europe, however.

Oh they’re clever these kids. They noted what the main meal was and told the lunch ladies that’s what they had had the day before so they could have the pasta. The chocolate twists were in the 6th form - by that point there was pretty much a free for all

Don’t worry they’ve survived to adulthood with those wonderful skin and teeth mentioned above and are all perfect weights, healthy and smart. Thanks for the nutrition advice though

@CrispEatingExpert

in my house we have always eaten any food for breakfast, i personally like curry and rice or egg drop noodles and spinach with miso. The former is leftovers, I make huge batches of dal and rice and freeze, the soup noodles take 3 minutes to do, Japanese recipe. My now husband laughs at my weekday breakfasts, we have more conventional bacon sandwiches or scrambled eggs on toast at weekends