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

My kids know about chocolate cereal as I eat it what do you want me to do give them a carrot why I sit their with a bowl of coco pops. That would be mean.

I get it and I have the same reservations. People.seem.to think "healthy" options include ultra processed fake bread and cereal and the only alternative would be a salad.

Unfortunately of course the schools can't serve anything else since in the UK it's nearly impossible to buy proper food without shite in it. If you want something plain and simple (and actually healthy) you have to pay £££, if you can even find it. It's backwards.

The food and drug companies obviously know this and will be thrilled to have half the population on mounjaro in a few years time!

The breakfast club at our school doesn’t have cooking facilities. It has a toaster and that’s it. Staffing levels and facilities needed to produce continuous hot porridge over an hour period is much greater than that popping bread in the toaster or pouring cereal so with the paltry funding from the government you can see why schools opt for this option.

Cereal may be processed but it's not the end of the world it's fortified with loads of vitamins like iron and vitamin d which a lot of people don't realise they're deficient in.

Personally I think the free breakfast and free lunches should just be for families with low incomes making it free for everyone is just a waste of money. At the moment the income limit is only 7k it should be raised to something like 25k but families on 100k getting free lunch in reception to year 2? What a waste of money that could be spent improving the food

It shouldn’t be a choice we have to make.

white bread and jam is shocking nutrition wise, it shouldn’t be an option.

I totally agree, that would be a great breakfast.

Literally no one has suggested avo on toast for breakfast at breakfast club. No one.

i posted that’s what i feed my own children as one of their breakfasts.

but I think you kniw that.

They would have to.

Though my son would be cheap because his dietary needs means he must eat the evil white bread and not the wholemeal bread!

One thing that’s not been mentioned though is that the supermarkets are really good. We’ve got a donation trolley at the end of the checkout for the local schools breakfast club and Tesco’s match the donations.

They will probably have to, although That that’s just gonna divert funds so that everybody gets less overall

But what if the option is white bread with jam OR a child goes without breakfast?
I'd sure as hell pick one of these so called poor quality turn your nose up at breakfasts than a child going hungry.

One thing I'd want to know about the free breakfast in the UK, is will they provide breakfast for children with dietary needs? Are they going to be providing gluten free bread and cereal?

A bad breakfast is better than no breakfast of course but it would be good if it was decent food, but decent food costs money and children moan if they're not used to it. But with time they would get used to it but is the will there to keep going despite complaints?

I'm in Finland, my DS has been going to breakfast club this school year and its always porridge (different type each day so oat one day, barley another, four grain, wheat, rice, so some variety but always healthy except perhaps the rice porridge), bread (not cheap white bread but wholegrain sliced bread or rye bread) with cheese or ham to put on it plus some kind of vegetable like cucumber or lettuce or tomato slices. Its the same breakfast they have at nursery so they all get used to it. Similar deal with lunch (which is free for everyone and everyone eats it - no packed lunches), fairly healthy meals, no burgers or chips or pizza ever though there is UPF foods sometimes like fish balls, salad and vegetables and decent bread/crispbread. In preschool they have the rule that they all have to taste everything even if they don't like it so they get used to all the flavours.

Exactly.
I can accept there are useless parents, feckless parents and parents who don't prioritise the time, organisation or money to have food in the house.
But I cannot and will not accept that any UK family, working or not, does not gave the money to buy a loaf of bread or box of cereal, sorry.
That's not privilege, it's common sense.
I have no idea why people are so keen to push the narrative tbh.

Surely this is down to costs though.food had increased hugely. Obviously it would be best if every child had wholemeal toast ,and the better cereals.this is a start at least. Many children may struggle to eat at home,maybe poverty or just lack of time .most parents working.eithret way porridge is very cheap,filling and nutritious.

Not where I work.

Chips, pizza (massive, greasy slice), hash brown in a bun, pasty, bacon bap, donuts, big chocolate cookie. Some white bread/baguette sandwiches with ham/cheese/chicken & mayo.

Same every day. No actual meals. No salad. No veg.

It’s been that way for 10+ years. Like Jamie Oliver never happened.

The OP has a point. Children on FSM deserve better.

This.
These parents who are saying that, why?
In Scottlland and you don't work, you can have a huge amounts of benefits due to gateway benefits,
CB, UC, housing benefit, Scottish child payments, and then in the holidays, extra money because not getting the free school meals.

Do you not remember Jamie Oliver’s dinner?
The problem is, they won’t eat anything else other than cereals or toast with jam and Marge
We need to get back to Sure start where we’re teaching people to wean with porridge and baby rice with fruit added to it instead of a Greg sausage roll from the minute they can hold it

Right, so for once can the responsibility not be put on their feckless parents?

Panda89
See this is why i would never send my DC. Rice krispies might be low "sugar" but nutritionally they are a poor breakfast. They are just air, you need to eat a massive bowl for a growing child to get enough calories.

Generally my view of the food offered in many British state schools is that its terrible. Cheap crap, small portions.

My son had school dinners for one year and in that time his weight relative to his height fell. He was constantly hungry. My friend is on the governors and admitted she'd seen the food and it was pretty awful, but that the school had no choice, it was the only supplier covering local schools with no kitchens and they had a statutory obligation to provide infant school free lunches.

I read the government guidance on whats supposed to be in these lunches from a nutritional point of view and couldn't see how they were possibly meeting it from the recipe info on the providers website.

I can't see how breakfasts will be any better. The problem is so much of any budget the government provide for it will go on paying staff to make/serve/transport it, plus admin of planning menus, logistics etc, fuck all money is provided for the actual food.

It would be cheaper/better to provide food vouchers to parents for standard bundles of milk, oats, eggs, fruit, yoghurt etc but that wouldn't solve the issue of chaotic homes who can't manage to feed their DC well even when there is plenty of food available.

A couple of years ago we started offering a free breakfast club for children on FSM, funded by us with no Govt help. We didn't make a big thing of it, and only told the parents of those children. Other parents who need it for childcare still pay. It's only a small TA run service for 30 mins before school starts.

We provide the basics - toast and cereal with a variety of spreads, and cereal choices. There is always milk and fruit available too. Sometimes we have crumpets, and sometimes (ready made) pancakes.

We had barely any takers and we were told that if we wanted to do this it should be in school time, (meaning the children would miss the first 30 mins in class) rather than them having to come to school early. The children also moaned about the bread (we tried wholemeal, then the 50/50 stuff before reverting to plain white) and the plain cereal, wanting chocolate versions.

I'd rather the Govt upped the funding for lunches so our provider can give a decent sized plate and better quality meals - that's where our problem is, lots of children qualify but few take up as the kids don't like what is on offer, or they bring snacks (crisps/pastries) to top up because the meals are so small.

Unfortunately they're still better with their parents. The level of neglect has to be quite serious before the outcomes are better away from their biological family.

"Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you." (George Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier)

DDs school are piloting the government funded free breakfast club. She loves to go because her friends also go, and the school make it fun with games/music etc. She tells me she has rice crispies most days.
I do wonder if attending will include her into a statistic of ‘unfed children’ which is absolutely not the case, we have no issue providing breakfast at home.