To think banning fried eggs is a step too far?

I dont eye roll at you … getting involved in learning how to plan, ingredients, time needed, balance of nutrition is essential especially if it is no longer taught in schools 😊

Unless the child is learning to cook, in which case great as meal planning is part and parcel of it, I don’t know what’s to be gained by asking a child to plan dinner or whatever and I think it’s good to learn that sometimes you are just given food without choice like if you’re a guest. Or if school meals were fewer but better quality choices then the child’s expectations of having choice would be less.

Only in comparison to saturated fat or other (worse) oils. Whole food fats are better at lowering cholesterol than olive oil. No oil is better.

I use olive oil that actually reduces colestoral.

Also oil would allow a meal to potentially be the vegan option or the allergy friendly option depending on what else is in the food. I can see why they use it. A healthy oil would be best but more expensive, and the likelihood is it's a cheap one.

If anyone is frying eggs en mass they are likely to be cheap eggs cooked in cheap oil. Kids don’t need to be eating fried anything in school. If you must have eggs, scrambled or poached is better.

Cost. Oil is cheaper - and you can bet they use the cheapest oil that is fit for human consumption.

Why can't they use butter instead of oil?

Pretty terrible offering there IMO and why so much choice? I’m a bit shocked. Limit the choice and reduce cost as less waste for a starter. I don’t even know what a pasta pot is I’ll be honest!

I may be older and old school but they need to stop this pandering to choice and focus on nutrition but nice to eat dishes. I mean a good restaurant will often often a set menu with 2 or 3 choices which is enjoyable and good value. Good food can be really enjoyable.

I’ve worked in schools for 20 years and I’ve never seen a fried egg, let alone a poached one !

I'm fortunate to work in a brilliant food room where we teach proper cookery. Unfortunately most schools just don't have the budget for it. It really should be a national priority in my opinion, students get so much of out it.
But it doesn't help that a significant chunk of kids are coming into year 7 without even the most basic kitchen skills. The first half of year 7 is just drilling into them to remember that knives are sharp and ovens are hot and teaching them how to wash up. So it really does need to start at home.

The main cost would probably come from setting up proper in house kitchens again. Ongoing, I’m not sure it would actually cost much more. Strip out private companies trying to maximise profit over quality. There’s an instant cost saving there. Secondly, stop so much choice. A previous poster showed the massive (low quality) choice. Offering one meal (with a veggie option) reduces waste. There’s another cost saving. I can’t believe that offering lots of pot noodles/pizza/sausage rolls etc works out much cheaper than, say, everyone being given pasta with a healthy veggie sauce.

ETA : it would also have the benefit of reducing packaging waste. Pre packaged UPFs in schools must be producing a ridiculous amount of rubbish.

I think the Governments inaction over other issues is causing greater risk of harm to children than a fried egg to be honest 🤷‍♀️

Everything is fine in moderation but if they're having fried eggs every day there are better alternatives. Poached , scrambled etc

I have mixed feelings about this. As a kid we by rota had the same meal every two weeks (so a two week rota) we had protein, veg and carb on the plate - no pasta in those days to be honest but pasta is fine. It was always a hot meal unless summer and they replace one of the meals with a salad. They also need to look at nutrition as a whole rather than per meal - so maybe over the week. All pasta, bread and rice should be part wholemeal - some of the younger kids say reception should maybe be on white due to digestability for age. There should be crudites for all meals and fruit always available. There are plenty of options for dessert without saying "but must contain fruit" how about chocolate corgette cake and custard. I think they limit a decent cook by being so prescriptive.

The brilliance (not) of many of Thatcher’s policies are really obvious today 😢

The problem is dd’s school does offer two worthy alternatives per day. It is presenting unhealthy quick convenience upf crap alongside sensible food and then expecting TEENAGERS of all people to make the right choice.

What is the point fixing food in primary schools if secondary schools are allowed to sell this total crap?

I could of course ban my dd from buying it but ALL her friends eat it. So there is a lot of peer pressure. And additionally she has spent many years battling arfid so it is really hard for her to look at badly mass produced slop and think “i’ll eat that” whereas the upf crap is consistent - it’s a known quantity.

Sounds like 'recipes' from US sites. There are a lot of opening different tins/packets and mixing them together.

Ah, but what is a decent oil?

It’s a controversial topic.

On the odd occasion that I fry an egg, I use lard. But I mostly prefer them scrambled or as omelettes.

Try reading my post again.

It’s what the OP is focusing on that’s disappointing. And the usual whijgefest when any attempt is made to make food healthier. Meanwhile we have more burger bars, chicken shops and cake places than you can shake a stick at and that’s apparently just fine.

They’re not going to poach eggs in schools 😂

I agree, I've seen with a lot of kids of people I know that they are feeding them small portions of basically whatever they eat (which includes loads of fruit and veg) and then they go to school and don't want anything but chicken nuggets or sausages. If they get used to eating junk at school then they will expect it at home.

What is the point of frying an egg when you can boil or poach it just as easily and not use oil. It's obviously better not to feed children extra (probably shit quality) oil. Why's it even up for debate 😂

I don’t know of anyone having packed lunch for any reason. Dietary requirements/allergies are obviously catered for. At the schools we’ve been at, lunch is included in the fees (it’s not listed separately).

I do agree, but we do tend to think that UPF is a recent thing when it really isn't.
The 70s and 80s were full of UPF, mostly a hangover from the war. Proper dairy ice-cream was virtually non-existent. Dream topping, Angel delight, etc, all mass produced cheap chemical crap.
Ever since this industrial revolution, cheap food, particularly sweet stuff has had rubbish in it. It's actually far more regulated now than it was, particularly E-numbers.

Go back even earlier and unscrupulous Victorians were bleaching flour to make it whiter and putting sawdust in it to bulk it out.
I dread to think what they put in the substitute stuff my parents ate during rationing. What does it take to make powdered eggs?

In our house, we had powdered soup, custard powder, gravy granules. All highly processed.
The difference was that we ALSO had vegetables with tea every night with the exception of fish and chips Friday, always cooked from fresh, even though my mother worked full time, because despite the popular MN myth, plenty of families had both parents working. All right, she tended to boil the veg to death, but at least we had it. We might have burgers but always alongside green veg and potatoes.

It didn't matter that we ate a couple of shop bought biscuits (which have been around for about two centuries) in the evening, or had green's cheesecake mix for dessert on a Sunday, because most of our main meal food was veg, meat and potatoes. Cheap cuts, granted, but not covered in breadcrumbs and sugary marinades.

My mum was what was called a 'plain cook'. Meat and three veg. Veg was cheaper then. Ready meals were expensive things. Packet cakes were expensive things. Treats.

The good stuff has got more expensive and the crap has got cheaper. We have way more sedentary kids as well.

The point here is that a fried egg isn’t unhealthy so why is it disappointing. I suspect it’s more about the oil that foods are being fried in rather than the foods themselves because the school meals budget won’t allow for anything other than cheap quality.