Only 1% of packed lunches meet the nutritional standards of a school meal

[Ifailed]

According to a Government report www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-53574164. Without Googling it, how many know what would constitute a "correct" packed lunch for a child - I know I wouldn't?

I would say although school meals may have more 'nutritional value' then a packed lunch. If the children won't eat it then it has no nutritional value at all.

They also need to see what schools actually serve and not what they serve on a day to day.

For example the school (Primary) I worked at were told by the council that instead of fish fingers (which was 2 small fish fingers, about 10 chips and a desert spoon of beans) they would serve fish curry. Yes the curry had a better nutritional value then the fish finger. But in reality it had no nutritional value as the children would not eat it.

I don't really understand why it's not ok to have a packet of Pom Bears in the lunch box but ok to have a cake for pudding if having a school dinner.

For example the school (Primary) I worked at were told by the council that instead of fish fingers (which was 2 small fish fingers, about 10 chips and a desert spoon of beans) they would serve fish curry. Yes the curry had a better nutritional value then the fish finger. But in reality it had no nutritional value as the children would not eat it.

Tell me about it. Ours switched from cod fish fingers to salmon fish fingers. Turns out, kids won't eat salmon fish fingers.

Thing is though some children will eat fish curry - it seems a bit unfair to make school dinners generally shit on the basis of some children not eating proper food. Can’t they bring packed lunches?

Just to be clear I know it’s not a judgment on the parents of fussy eaters - I know it’s mostly luck. I just don’t think it’s helpful to have a culture where we think children eating things that aren’t oven baked breaded kiddy things is really unusual.

I stopped taking any notice of criticism for pack lunches, when the lunchtime assistant made my son feel bad for eating a mini malt loaf. The same week I saw her encouraging her grandson to finish a Monster energy drink on the way to primary school.

Does anyone know what the nutritional standards for school meals actually are? Then I could figure out if I was meeting them, and if not whether it was due to things like requirements for low fat food etc.

I stopped taking any notice of criticism for pack lunches, when the lunchtime assistant made my son feel bad for eating a mini malt loaf.

That’s so ridiculous - why on earth do they think it’s any of their business. Unless there is a rule against it which I doubt.

I don't know why COVID meant schools couldn't provide hot food anymore but it does at DDs' primary school. DD2, who is in Reception, apparently had a jam sandwich, crisps, a fruit and biscuits everyday for her school dinner. DD1 had a packed lunch from home, which was not perfect but was much better than DD1's lunch. Fortunately, they were attending as keyworker children so could only go on the days that I worked so were only there 2 days a week on average. If DD2 had been eating that for lunch 5 days a week, I probably would have sent her a packed lunch from home too.

I've worked as a dinner lady in several primary schools. And seen many pack lunches. Generally most people send a sandwich, crisps, fruit, yogurt and a treat like a chocolate biscuit. Also a drink such as a Capri Sun. Maybe a babybel too. Occasionly some kids have pasta salad or a lunchable set. I think most parents can be trusted to make reasonable choices for their child. Did meet one child who had chocolate for lunch every day, so chocolate spread sarnies, chocolate milkshake, chocolate cereal, chocolate bar and a chocolate moose. As he had dietary issues and wouldn't eat anything else.
I left one school because we had to take anything chocolate away. Even say 1 jaffa cake with minimal chocolate. Crisps were banned.
The other 2 were quite reasonable with regards to pack lunches and we had to try encourage the children to eat their savouries first. These 2 schools would allow something like a penguin bar as it was a biscuit but not allow something like a mars bar. But if they had it we couldn't take it or stop them eating it. Both schools would give water to any child with fizzy pop though and return to the parents at the end of the day.
With regards to the school dinners; yes they're meant to be balanced meals but as a few pp have mentioned kids will eat what they want and leave the rest. Pork chop day for example, really tough cut of meat that even I struggle to cut up, often gets wasted. With regards to puddings - in my local authority the puddings are low sugar so the chocolate cake had beetroot in. Most puddings are really bland.
Also a lot of school dinners are quite carb heavy. My current school offers 3 choices, main meal which always has some form of potato or pasta, jackets spud or a panini with chips. Then there's a salad bar for kids to help themselves with has pasta in it too. So i think school dinners are that great.

Sorry should say "I DON'T think school dinners are that great"

@pinkcattydude

I stopped taking any notice of criticism for pack lunches, when the lunchtime assistant made my son feel bad for eating a mini malt loaf. The same week I saw her encouraging her grandson to finish a Monster energy drink on the way to primary school.

Unfortunately I've witnessed similar first hand. Management putting pressure on the lunch staff at a previous school to tell children what foods were unhealthy. Really bad practise as I'm sure most children don't choose the contents of their pack up.

I find that really hard to believe having seen the state of most school dinners tbh.

Maybe if compared to some ideal school dinner designed by Jamie Cocking Oliver, but not when compared to the complete shit most kids are offered!

One of my DC was given a pizza slice with spaghetti hoops and sweetcorn followed by a chocolate chip cookie and glass of milk a few months ago FFS, apparently both spaghetti hoops and sweetcorn are portions of veg

Whereas when I send a packed lunch it will be a sandwich (either cheese or some sort of veggie ham slices) on best of both type bread, or a slice of homemade pizza from the night before, or a home made veggie sausage roll. Plus a piece of fruit (usually satsuma or doughnut peach), some cucumber and carrot sticks, a few halved cherry tomatoes,
and some peas in the pod when in season. Then a no added sugar cereal bar (the sort that are made from oats and fruit only) and usually a packet of either mini cheddars or mini ritz crackers.

Fuck off telling me that's a lower quality meal than pizza with spaghetti hoops and sweetcorn!

Also a lot of school dinners are quite carb heavy.

Oh yes how could I forget that the school I was at on a Friday they did Pizza, Pasta and beans for lunch. And the square of pizza was always had a thick bread base and very little topping.

I think it really depends where you are and some of you sound like you have rubbish school dinners. Where I work it's much better, food is made on site from scratch, apart from things like chips which they have once a week and they come frozen. We have pasta dishes, curries, roasts, sausage and mash, meat free Monday and salad and vegetables with every meal. Also, the food is served to the children at the table and they sit in groups of 8 at a round table, so they can see each other eating and trying things.

The borough I work in has a high level of deprivation and offers free meals to all children up until the end of Year 6. Very few children bring in packed lunches and those who do tend to have autism (school has a unit so lots of kids have ASC and many only eat home food).

Some children still bring in a packed lunch containing a packet of Maryland cookies and a bottle of coke, but this is very rare. However these are the kind of lunchboxes that make the headlines, as a way to shame women who are often single mums living on very little money and lets all have a laugh at them doing their sad face and their kids daft names.

I do think school lunches have their place though, they're brilliant for those children who would otherwise not have anything

I have worked in a deprived area at a holiday club once and one child was sent with a tin of beans. Nothing else. The club had things to feed him thankfully

@OryxNotCrake

School meals may be nutritionally balanced on paper but many kids will not be getting the full nutritional benefit because they don’t eat all of it. it. A huge amount of food is thrown away daily in schools because children will eat the rice and chicken or whatever and leave the vegetables.

I've worked in nurseries for many years. Recently supply work so I see lots of nurseries at lunch time. That post is bang on. A regular tea at my current place is pitta bread strips, with carrot and cucumber sticks, tomatoes, served with hummus. In the baby room the carrot is way too hard for children with 3 or 4 teeth. A child once ate a tomato, but that was a few years ago now. Cucumber gets eaten by some. Hummus is eaten by a child every now and again but most of the time it's avoided, and anything that might have come into contact with it. So basically, teatime is dry strips of pitta bread and a cucumber stick. Another place served unsweetened natural yoghurt with crushed raspberry topping. It was one of the sourest things I've tried, and I eat the lemons in my drinks. The children didn't eat it. The parents came later and said it was odd as they usually like yoghurt.

If you judge nurseries on how healthy their food is they'll make healthy food. They need to be judged on the food that gets eaten instead.

Considering the state of some of the school meals on the menu at dds school her packed lunches are far healthier.

Dd has food allergies but because we cannot pinpoint exactly what they are or prove it in testing they won't provide allergen free meals for her so we have no choice but to send lunches. Due to this she has a very restricted diet (and is a fussy bugger) so she alternates between ham and jam in her sandwich, a dairylea dunker, packet of crisps, grapes and occasionally bits of apple. The school don't police their lunches as such as long as no peanut products involved. But I would be bloody livid if they took away her lunch when they serve chips every day and things like pizza, burgers, chicken nuggets etc

Ok, looks like this is the sort of thing your packed lunch would be judged against:

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/786334/Checklist-for-school-lunches.pdf

Not surprising that only 1% would pass as it is fairly detailed and requires things like dessert and bread to be provided. It also requires a lot of variety throughout the week, so sending the same sort of thing most days would trip you up.

Given the difficulty I have had in trying to get a gluten free school dinner for DS (literally months of chasing up the catering company only to be told that he’d have to just eat what they decreed every day, whether he liked it or not, no choice or discussion of the menu whatsoever - even though he’s the only child requiring a GF diet in the whole school), I’d be really pissed off if the school criticised what I put in his packed lunch.

In his first school, the dinner ladies were more accommodating but limited in what they could provide. Mostly he got a jacket potato every single lunchtime. It got to the point that he will no longer willingly eat jacket potatoes because he’s so sick of the sight of them.

Agree that many school lunches are very carb heavy - including sugar in pudding (even if low sugar) - and that even when they're good, they're only as good as the children actually eat. DS was on packed school dinners when he returned to school during COVID but he is very conscious of eating healthy and asked to swap back to packed lunch after he had a pizza slice and chocolate cake one day and then a sausage roll and cookie the next.

He gave Marks & Spencer's Percy Pig sweets as an example, saying they are marketed on the packet as containing all natural fruit juice and placed "right by you kids' little fingers".
However, he said the first four ingredients listed are forms of sugar such as fructose syrup and glucose-fructose syrup.

I am never sure if this is a marketing issue or lack of education for consumers. Because to me, this means that they haven't filled it with additional, fake flavourings etc. NOT that it's therefore a healthy fruit snack. But if people are giving their DC Percy Pigs as a way to help fulfil their 5 a day, then yes, there's a problem we need to get on top of here. Is this the classic issue between what's good for you vs what's high quality food? Artisan cookies being high quality but not necessarily good for you?

Also, surely a "good" packed lunch is one that's low in sugar and has a mix of protein, carbs, fruit and veg and possibly diary? And, as a PP has pointed out, that is part of an overall healthy diet for the child? So I don't bother ever putting veg in DC's packed lunches (except cucumber on DS' chicken sandwich) but they do have two portions of fruit. At home, they tend to eat less fruit so getting it in at lunch works and then both eat veg at dinner, especially DS as he eats with us and we eat vegetarian 50% of the time so he gets extra variety compared to DD.

I am always surprised by schol meals described on mn. Dh and I have both eaten at our dd's school a couple of times, they have samples on parents' evening and a day when they invite parents in to eat lunch with their dcs, we can also see the menus in advance online. Apart from fish and chips on Fridays which I don't think is the end of the world, the meals are all made onsite and healthy e.g. spag bol, roast chicken dinner with veg and gravy, shepherd's pie etc. There is always salad and fruit available as well as a pudding. Yes this is often something like chocolate cake but having tried it several times it is not sweet "proper" cake but more like the sort of unsweetened banana loaf you would find in a baby weaning recipe book with cocoa added. It is certainly healthier than having something like a penguin or club biscuit in a lunch box.

I work in a secondary school which also has a proper cooked meal choice, salad bar, jacket potatoes, baguette bar and pasta or curry pot available every day. By far the most popular options are the baguettes and the kids like fillings like chicken tikka, tuna and sweetcorn or cheese and tomato. To be fair they often choose something like a cookie to have with it but I don't think that's a dreadful lunch and actually not too dissimilar to what might be put in a lunch box. School doesn't serve any crisps, chocolate bars or sugary drinks and again everything is made onsite.

My ds school once sent a printed letter home telling me that cheese was full of fat and unhealthy after I’d put some cheddar sticks in his lunch.

They also sent out a letter urging parents to only send in fat free yogurts and if you were using mayo, make sure that’s fat free too.

Oh yeah, because low fat crap filled with artificial sweeteners is so much better, right?

But how come on the days he had school dinners it was pizza and ice cream and cake? But he couldn’t eat cheese and full fat Greek yogurt?