To think banning fried eggs is a step too far?

Are you in London?

They should just eat gruel and be thankful for it.

Wow, things have changed. Our breakfast club (20 yrs ago) had no cooking facilities so all they could offer was cold items, plus maybe toast (white bread only) with jam & butter.

I am minded to observe that teenagers are famous for skipping breakfast, getting anything into them is an achievement, cooking to order not realistic, either.

I had two friend eggs for dinner after reading this thread

London sixth form here offers them free porridge and plenty kids have it every day. My DC take a smoothie- it takes seconds if you have the one that has a bottle as a container. Blend it with all sorts including oats yoghurt spinach banana avocado and it’s easy delicious nutritious breakfast.

State primary definitely have fortified whole breakfast cereals and porridge, yoghurt and fruit on offer as well as brown toast- that is the paid version of the breakfast club though. I doubt they could do that for 60p.

Why would children not eat it? Lots of children aren’t spoiled and will eat what they are given.

(ARFID is the exception of course).

5 meals a week will make a huge difference to those most at risk for who it is possibly their main meal of the day or, alternatively, their only meal or the only meal with whole grains and fruit/veg.

You underestimate the situation some children are in.

You have no way to evidence this, with the greatest of respect. It’s just a thought you have.

My kids primary school dinners in a Spanish state school were like this. Everyone sat together, family stylee, dished out and cleared up together, bowl of salad and jug of water. Soup for starter, fruit/fruit salad for pudding. Canteen style in high school, but similar options.
I just don't think we have the same cultural attitude to food/dinning here in the UK (also see uniforms!) It would never work here, our schools are too big for start!

No, it's in St Helens and Knowsley.

Well, someone got to feed them healthy food surely. Poor kids.

Do you have evidence to the alternative?

The NDNS shows that children are eating too much energy, free sugars, saturated fat and not enough fibre.

10% of children aged 4 to 10 are deficient in vitamin D. 8% are deficient in folate. 13% in iodene.

The study shows that with increasing household income, the number of 5 A Day portions consumed per day increased for all age and sex groups - though children still did not eat 5 on average.

Logic dictates that if children are fed multiple portions of fruit and veg at school and foods high in micronutrients and low in saturated fat, sugars compared to what schools are serving now then this will change and have an impact.

Because it’s a saturated fat, it’ll burn if you try to fry with it and mostly because it’s so expensive!

Frying an egg in olive oil, what's the issue??

That’s not how evidencing works, as hopefully you realise. You can’t possibly know what the impact of 5 meals a week is on children’s health.

For example, by introducing healthy, varied diets to children who will one day be 'the parents'?

Maybe the kids will go home and ask for something they have tried in school. A major roadblock to lower income families giving children new foods to try is the fact that they can't afford for food to be wasted so need to know that it will be eaten.

Good points. I know my own picky child started eating a wider range of food when he saw his schoolfriends eating the school dinners, which were compulsory at his (fee-paying) school. Not sure what happened if the parents or child wanted a packed lunch option, but the school meals were included in the fees, so the vast majority of parents appeared to do what we did, i.e. tell their children that they would be having the school dinners (which were good, far better than the meals at his community primary school had been).

I just wonder how that will go down in a school where packed lunch is an obvious alternative. It's certainly what we did at primary school and even though my son had the same lunch day after day I was moderately confident it was more, or at any rate no less, nutritious than the school offering. But that was a long time ago. He's in his 30s now and eats almost anything. Phew.

In families that are struggling to make ends meet packed lunches aren't an option. Kids tend to learn pretty quickly when living in poverty what isn't going to happen.

Anything that feeds kids is a good thing. Encouraging they to try new things is great too.

One of my kids the school lunches worked for. And ment they'd try stuff.
The other would go for sandwich option 80% of the time.

I do think that some parents would just go to packed lunches instead.

Mine is picky for several reasons (including medical ones to be fair) and my goal right now is simply for him to eat. He's already on packed lunches but if he wasn't, I'd very likely have switched him.

I hope people don't think picky means they'll only eat beige nuggets and the like.

Mine will happily have steaks, chicken etc, roasts but doesn't do sauce or sloppy.
Lots of mass produced is sloppy sauces, mash and mince.

My son doesn't do sauce/sloppy either. He also doesn't generally like food that is 'mixed', separate only.

Some of the things mentioned in the new guidelines are a bit of a red herring at least for many primary schools who are already doing a lot of what is being suggested, it’s at secondary level where the big overhaul will have to happen. Most if not all schools got rid of their deep fat fryers 20 years ago. I have never seen fried eggs served in any school, all day breakfast is a popular menu option, but for the eggs scrambled or omelette style is usually the go to option as they’re easier to prepare and serve on a mass scale. Bacon and sausages are oven baked.

I think there needs to be a balance struck, I am all for providing healthy meals and different food experiences at school but if children don’t eat it and it ends up in the bin then it’s no use to anyone. I think there are ways of adapting things that children are typically familiar with to improve nutritional content without them necessarily realising it. Blending veg into sauces (already happens in a lot of schools), whole grain pizza bases, hand cut oven baked skin on chips or wedges, beef burgers where beef mince is mixed with broccoli to make the patties, serve with 50/50 or whole meal buns and salad and I don’t see the issue with that as a meal at all. It’s familiar, but still decent nutritionally, the average school child is likely to want to eat it.

A mix of things like the above and some different options would be the way to go. If kids like and enjoy the healthier version of things they already eat at school, that improves their overall impression of school food in general and they may be more likely to try other things on the menu.

I’m not sure on things like banning adding salt, if It means not adding it to sauces etc, a little is ok even for children and can go a long way in improving the flavour of a dish so they enjoy it. Chips at most school whilst frozen, have just potatoes and usually sunflower oil listed as the only ingredients and are oven baked, so no worse than roast potatoes really, which use the same ingredients and cooking method.

But in answer to op’s question, no I don’t think it’s a step too far since fried eggs aren’t common place in school kitchens in the first place.

Secondary schools kids are likely to vote with feet and go elsewhere.

Schools are verging on obsessed with blending veg into sauce missing lots of kids won't touch heavy thick sauces. Thanks Jamie.

I've seen me try to salvage dinner by scraping the sauce off it. With limited success.
But actually he likes proper broccoli 🥦 just not too mushy and definitely not blended into a sauce