AIBU to be concerned about my daughter's school lunch menu?

I guess we all only have experience of the schools we have experience of 🤷🏻‍♀️

Fair enough, my experience is that staff have nothing to do with what pupils eat at lunch and wouldn't be able to interfere in what the children picked to eat.

Mine are at private school, the staff eat with the children. The children choose their own food, but the staff would address any concerns if the parents had any.

Well, that's not my experience of private schools. Staff had their own private dining area.

We had a healthy sounding menu, but firstly, my kids would always choose the most unhealthy option (any kind of pizza, pizza swirl, ham and cheese bread combination - tbf they take after their mother!) and secondly, I found the veg bit of whatever it was was always very small, eg. a tablespoon of tomato sauce for the pasta.

I ended up putting them on packed lunches, which is more work but I get more control. We have an understanding where I have to listen to them but they have to eat at least 2 portions of veg for lunch - no chucking it in the bin!

My last DS is older now and packs his own, so it's just a bit of weekend prep to make sure there's stuff in the freezer.

Not in the prep schools I have worked in. Staff are expected to dine with their pupils. Lunch time is a time we come together as a community and every independent school I have worked in, parental concerns around meal choices would be address by the class teacher/form tutor. Every school is different but please don’t tell me I’m wrong when I’ve spent the last 25 years in prep schools.

I hope so… we pay £5.85 a day for lunches so I’d be disappointed if only 50p was spent on ingredients!
Anyway I think the menu the OP posted looks fine, and the issue is that her daughter is choosing the unhealthy options. Which one of mine did too for a while! All she ate was cheese, bread and dessert for half a term until I realised what was happening!

Seems very old fashioned and stodgy!

My DC’s school (state) has:
-a daily salad bar
-daily jacket potatoes with things like grated cheese, tuna, beans alongside
-daily vegetarian pasta dish
Then a choice from two veggie and 2 meat/fish dishes with a menu provided a week ahead. It’s all home cooked stuff, no processed meat at all.
Dessert is yoghurt, fruit, ‘healthy’ versions of muffins and flapjacks sometimes. A proper pudding on Fridays.

They complain about the lack of puddings, though! 😆

The menu that you posted looks absolutely fine and I’d say is on par with what our state school serves, but with a few more options (for example, we don’t have salad available every day). It’s definitely not all sausage rolls and beans!

If your dd is a fussy eater and isn’t choosing the healthy options, then than is a separate issue to address. My guess is they have to have some beige food options for the kids who can’t eat anything else, but she doesn’t have to choose those.

That's really not how school lunches work in private schools - teachers don't stand over the kids and offer help - once they're in prep school (so, age 8+) they make their own decisions. Someone will put things on their plate but they get the choice of what that is.

So it's the choices your DD is making. How old is she?

What's your plan now? I used to look at the menu the night before to help my younger DC but then in the end decided they will eat what they pick and i could then focus to fill them with better and healthy food at home

How old is dd? If old enough explain to her why processed meat on a daily basis isn’t a great choice. If she’s younger raise it with her teacher. Ask the teacher to help her select salad from the salad bar rather than ham.

I would think that the menus are on the school website. especially with an independent school. It should be under a section Information for parents .If this menu is accurate then maybe the school needs to change. We live near a school that gets a Brake's delivery and DH was a chef and has told me it is not a good standard for catering yet the vans show lovely food.

Me neither....I've been making my DD ham and cheese sandwiches to take to school for years on wholemeal bread...... thinking I was doing a good job on the protein and fibre front ....but I'm v worried now!! 😱

Oofff. It goes totally against what we know is a healthy diet. I’d be very unhappy about that. I’m guessing the school has people preparing the food who only have very basic training. It sounds like they are buying in a lot of frozen and long life stuff and heating it up. No actual ‘chef work’.

How old is your DD and is it definitely ham on the salad bar? You are taking her word on this, as that menu looks fairly reasonable.
Working in the hall at lunchtimes I can tell you that a lot of food is wasted. The veggie sides are often not eaten, kids don't like the taste of the school version even though parents insist they eat these foods at home, the salad bar has to be managed which is where I am sure kids go home and complain they weren't allowed it when the reality is the younger ones will take a bowl and fill with all the cucumber which means no one else can then have any, and then they also leave it which means it has to be binned as we don't know if they have touched it, therefore as staff we will assist the child in choosing salad and telling them to return if they want more.

They’re usually such small portions that I couldn’t get upset about it.

I completely agree with you. I don’t allow my kids to eat ham, it’s so freaking bad for you. And all of those foods you list are pretty much just processed red meats. I’d be really annoyed by that. My kids school changed supplier and I asked for a full breakdown of the ingredients of each meal. As an example the meatballs and pasta meal had 8 E numbers in it! How hard is it to make a meatball! My kids have packed lunches. I’d be fuming if I didn’t have that option.

They have probably found that that's what the children will eat. I know at dd's school the menu sounds good and healthy and is all low sugar/salt versions of everything etc. In reality, this means a lot of food gets wasted as the children just eat the bits they like (generally the less healthy bits) and leave the rest. At home, dd will eat most things, including veg, but has moved to packed lunches now because the food is just tasteless.

It's a known carcinogenic.

how old is your DD?

My kids are in a state school and I’m pleasantly surprised by their menu. They have curries, jacket potatoes, chilli, spaghetti bolognaise etc. they can always have a sandwich if they don’t fancy any of that. Followed my fruit or yoghurt. Once a week they can have cake. For an independent school, that menu is shocking. Ask them if you can have a menu. If it is that bad I’d be having a word with them.

I ate sausage, beans and chips at school everyday for 5 years!

Learned something new today