To think banning fried eggs is a step too far?

I'm assuming packed lunches would be allowed for medical reasons?

Try doing it in the microwave. It’s a bit more of a faff because you have to stir every now and then, but they come out light and fluffy and you don’t need fat. Just a bit of salt and pepper. I quite like a few chopped fresh chives mixed in before cooking.

It’s so disappointing this is your take from this. It’s all about healthy eating and your issue is about fried eggs. Why not praise them for the fact they’re trying to address a really serious issue of young people’s heath, obesity is a serious and growing issue and bowel cancer is increasing for younger and younger people.

That’s way, way more of an issue than fried eggs at school, but as usual people who like to moan are focussing on irrelevances.

I agree. Unfortunately, as a country, we don’t place enough of an emphasis on decent food. You only have to look at the mainstream media and social media; so many articles on cutting the weekly food shopping budget. Generations ago, a much bigger proportion of household income was spent on food than it is now. I appreciate that most families are stretched and don’t have spare money, but I’d cut down on pretty much everything else before I cut down on decent food. The food offering in state education and the NHS is dreadful; it’s all about doing it as cheaply as possible. I’m not even convinced it’s actually that cheap, as they use external providers who want a profit. They produce food to maximise their profit. We need to move back to proper in house kitchens preparing fresh food daily rather than buying it in.

Our (private) school menu this week consists of spaghetti carbonara with a choice of veg and salad, turkey curry with 2 veg, salmon with fries and 3 veg, a proper roast dinner with veg, beef fajitas with 2 veg, grilled chicken with veg and salad. Admittedly they don’t have the same budget constraints, but if the state system was funded properly (or waste cut down) there is no reason why they couldn’t prepare healthy food. It’s prepared in house, and there is no choice. There is 1 item on the menu (there is veggie option and I think there’s jacket option a couple of days a week), so everyone eats the same. That cuts down on waste. It was the same at primary. They see their friends eating it, so they eat it. There’s a proper dessert each day, and soup. There’s no packed lunch option. Water to drink.

If everyone at secondary school sat down to a decently cooked meal - a proper bolognese or tomato pasta with a side of free beans, carrots and broccoli. It would be SO much better than being confronted with a HUGE list of snacks and crap and expected to make the healthy choice in front of peers.

I have the impression that the prohibition is actually the oil. I can’t imagine it’s particularly good quality given the budgets allocated for school meals. I remember when I was doing weight watchers fried eggs weren’t a prohibited food as long as they were cooked in a non stick pan with only a teaspoon of oil. I have a horrible feeling that school meals fried eggs would be practically deep fried !!

Agreed about the cereals. We have eggs on toast in this house for breakfast. Cereals are full of sugar.

So this is the lunchtime hot food menu at dd secondary school: what is good about this!???

Jacket Potato /Toppings
Pasta Pot
Hot Wrap / Burrito
Burger
Hot Sub Roll
Filled Flatbread
Panini
Hot Pastries
Chicken Pot
Flavoured Corn Pot
Wedges
Soup Cup
Margherita Pizza
Topped Pizza
Loaded Wedges
Hash Browns
Samosa
Bacon/ Sausage Roll

Eggs fried in a light oil are not less healthy than poached or scrambled eggs. Daft prohibition.
Chips are ambrosia. Do them in the oven with a light spray of oil and they are fine.

So this was my DD’s diet last week at school:

Mon - chicken, pasta pot and a cookie
Tues - chicken, and cookie
Weds - two cookies
Thursday - one cookie
Fri - chicken and potato wedge pot

I think she’s allowed salad but not sure

I don't believe the new guidelines have started yet.

Are you a Virgo?

If these are the guidelines, why is it possible for my dd to be allowed to purchase a choc chip cookie at break, an icecream and a soft drink at lunch, and a “chicken meal deal” which is basically quite poor quality unhealthy chicken wings and salad or a Jumbo sausage roll and nothing else?

Occasionally she’ll have a pasta pot - fairly sure that is white pasta and a basic tomato sauce.

Secondary school is surely the problem here…

That was my point - it's a waste of time improving school meals if children just stock up at the chicken shops on the way to/from school.

Not sure whether yet another chicken shop is a good thing for towns but here we are.

It's not just school meals. People in the UK in general eat loads of UPF rubbish and takeaways. Many mums don't know how to cook from scratch using fresh ingredients, and many don't have the time either. They need educating on how to do home cooked meals that are nutritious and quick to prepare.

But that's due to their diet now. Not 30 years ago.

Chickpea curry is one of my DC's favourites and improving healthy choices will be great for him because he'll actually eat them.

The other is incredibly selective and has ended up eating the same sandwich option for 90% of school meals - every time they adapt the menu to be healthier what he actually eats gets more restricted because he won't touch most of it.

I guess the average child is somewhere in the middle, but I'd love to know whether changing menus tend to get nudge them towards trying healthier foods or nudge them into a more restricted diet.

I don't think schools are fully responsible for sorting out a bad diet, but neither should they be adding to the problem and/ or potentially making the diets of those who eat a balanced diet out of school worse or normalising a bad diet.

Same. Except last week the 'pudding' for fish and chips day was fruit so we just had a packed lunch that day. My child eats relatively healthily and plenty of veg because I insist on it as much as possible, but she has a real thing about fruit so thats another day off the list every 3 weeks with the menu rotation.
My eldest was also complaining how the food is badly cooked so she barely had any school dinners.

I agree on the school vs home-life point - even during term time the vast majority of kids are going to eat at most half their meals a school, and for most kids it'll be five out of twenty in a week. Take holidays into account and I guess that your typical child eats about 20% of their meals at school. So why so much responsibility gets loaded onto schools I don't really know. It should be the case that even if schools basically said 'Look we'll make sure that your children get enough calories for the time they're here, a few vitamins n'that, and the food won't kill them', that it would still be fine because the vast majority of learning about food should be at home. And yes I realise that the word 'should' is doing some heavy lifting there as lots of parents are just useless, but why that means it should automatically be schools that become responsible for sorting it out isn't entirely clear to me

We have to also remember that back in the day there was no choice of main course either. Sometimes it would be something really revolting and you just had to either get on with it and eat it or leave it and just have the pudding. Now there is a lot of main course choice and a pudding shouldn't be necessary to fill kids up if they are having a decent sized portion of food. Puddings were a nice part of school meals in the past but maybe because people weren't having them at home after every meal? Surely if parents feel a pudding is important they can feed their kids one for dinner at home.

Poaching is better.

For school meals we always used to have a variety of afters following the main meal such as jam roly poly (suet based) with custard, rice pudding, sponge pudding with icing on and either normal, pink or chocolate custard, bananas and custard, rhubarb crumble and custard, ginger pudding and custard. The first course was always good with all the different meats, fish or sausages, mashed or chip potatoes and fresh vegetables or baked beans. Fish fingers and cheese pie were favourites. The only bad thing was liver which usually had arteries and veins in and is still making gag whilst I'm typing this!
We never had pizza, pasta or curries, beef burgers or anything remotely foreign, but all British foods.
This was the 1960's and 70's and were all healthy and still are today with only a handful of people in my entire school year presently to have died off (and mainly down to accidents). I can only put that down to good eating that we had, as, when we got home, our mums would have not dissimilar food on the table for the evening meal yet again. We were all skinny and quite active then and generally still are!
Adding wheat to too many things, removing sugar and salt and reducing sizes of tinned goods (from 454g to 375g for example) now makes you eat more, whereas before 1 tin would have been enough for two people but now you have a can each. Using oil instead of animal fats may be good for arteries but might not be good for making energy that is used to be more active, increase metabolism and reduce weight.

I was just going to say.

To go to my son's school, most people have to walk through the ''main area'' of the village which can include post office, pub, chippy, convenience store and several takeaways depending on which way you are coming from.

This is true, boomers example are the most obese generation we’ve ever known.

we have UPFs and commercial food production, but the 70s had smoking, asbestos, dangerous work environments, poor road safety, constant fried food and lead poisoning.

every generation has its threats, obesity is really a pretty light one in comparison.