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?

@midgebabe

Notice a few people saying school meals are small...at the same time we have an country where being overweight is normal...any link perhaps?

Often see kids eating on the way home from school. As pp says they're probably hungry after school and grazing before the evening meal. At to that kids that attend after schools might get a snack to put them on until the evening meal.

This doesn't surprise me. I've seen what some kids have for packed lunch and most of the time it was pretty bad. Loads of junk and stuff like jam sandwiches.

When I was a at high school it was the norm to pop into the likes of greggs or thomas the baker for something on the way to school and then the corner shop on the way home.
Df lives opposite a primary where the ice cream van is there at school kick out time in summer.

I’ve no idea what the govt decides is good enough.

Ds lunches include

• a chicken/pate/cheese sandwich or little pork pie/kebab/cold sausage
• a tub of tomatoes, peppers, cucumber etc,
• a piece of fruit
• a cereal bar or a couple of hobnobs
• hoola hoops or cheddars
• a bottle of water

Protein, veg, carbs, water. One small cereal bar is not going to damage my rake thin 12yo.

@Mintjulia according to the school dinner guidelines (obviously not the only way to judge healthiness) you'd need to add a serving of dairy and lose the hula hoops/cheddars to be counted in the 1%.

Oo I love jam sandwiches.

I remember my mum used to make me a packed lunch every day - can’t remember a single thing I ate but ONCE she was away and my dad made my lunch: crisp sandwich and a crunchie. BEST. LUNCH. EVER.

Having a requirement for dairy at all is such nonsense.

Dairy is food that is designed for babies. Cow milk is food designed to build strong and healthy cows.

I'm not vegan, this is not a pro-vegan post. But from what I've read (I obviously don't know this for sure) 65% of people have some level of intolerance for dairy, many of which don't know it.

To tell people that that should give it to their children every day is dreadful advice imo.

Before anyone jumps to conclusions, this is not a dig at parents (or anyone) that eats dairy. I have cheese rather more often than I should.

Its the government guidelines that it needs to be eaten daily that I have an issue with.

When ds was at primary, we tried the “healthy” school dinners for a while - he ate nothing, literally threw it all away and came home starving. Put him onto packed lunches and constantly got post it notes sent home telling me it wasn’t balanced as not enough fruit and veg. Started including more fruit and veg just to shut them up, and it all came home uneaten every single bloody day. All he would eat at school was a cheese sandwich and drink a carton of apple juice, regardless of what else I put in his lunchbox! Probably wasted £5 a week on stuff that was thrown away, just so as the lunchbox police were happy.

Now he’s at secondary, there’s a really good choice of varied meals, both hot and cold, he still chooses a cheese roll, or a chicken wrap, plus two cartons of juice every single day. You can offer a salad bar all day long, but it doesn’t mean kids will choose it!

(He does eat a decent diet at home, he’s just picky about how he likes veg cooked, and can’t stand warm, sweaty fruit that’s been in his bag all day).

@ElainaElephant the paper makes no mention at all of vegan children or dairy substitutes, which is a shame. However, they do analyse the nutritional content of the children's individual packed lunches (they note and weigh each item in the child's lunch and then look up the nutritional content later).

In 2006 only 55%, and in 2016 only 52% of lunches contained dairy, which, as you say, is not necessarily a bad thing. But later in the paper they find that only 64% (2006) and 65% (2016) of lunches contained the recommended levels of calcium, which is probably a bad thing.

Having seen school lunches, I am surprised by that.

Are they comparing packed lunches to the advertised menu or the actual crap the dc end up with? Because mine are apparently able to choose from a wide range of nutritious, delicious meals and have access to a wonderful salad bar, but what happens in actual fact is they choose from a limited list bearing no resemblance to the published menus and the salad bar is non existent.

@ElainaElephant

Having a requirement for dairy at all is such nonsense.

Dairy is food that is designed for babies. Cow milk is food designed to build strong and healthy cows.

I'm not vegan, this is not a pro-vegan post. But from what I've read (I obviously don't know this for sure) 65% of people have some level of intolerance for dairy, many of which don't know it.

To tell people that that should give it to their children every day is dreadful advice imo.

I’d need to send my son in with two fresh epi-pens everyday if I put dairy in his lunch box!

School dinners tend to be nutritious and have everything balanced across a week but based on the idea the child eats the main each day and eats all the elements. The reality is a lot ends up in the bin if the child gets no choice, or they chose things that arent balanced in the same way, like jacket potato with cheese every day. Fish day creates a lot of waste.
(Even the cakes are healthy versions that get left)

I actually don't see how this can be true at all tbh.

School dinners arent exactly known for being edible let alone nutritious.

Sure on paper they look OK but the guidelines still allow for them to be pretty crap. The vege option is mainly just cheesy stuff. And the veg is soggy mush that can't have any nutrients left in them.

And kids don't often get what they are meant to. So if its chicken curry rice and veg that sounds fine until the last sitting ends up with rice sweetcorn and a jacket potato cos they ran out.

Packed lunches have to account for the lack of decent storage , the integrity of the components, cant put stuff in there thats gonna go soggy or fall apart etc. And yes if they had a cheese and ham omelette for breakfast and have lasagne salad and fruit for dinner no ones really gonna worry that lunch is a jam sandwich an apple and a penguin.

Plus the stuff that gets not allowed cos its "unhealthy " is ridiculous. 3 squares of dark chocolate not allowed but a fruit winder is?

Just nonsense tbh

1% is pathetically low. Britain's parents really aren't that bad at feeding their children. The suggestion that only 1% meet standards really suggests that the standards are wrong.

Interesting pack lunches where i work, tend to be given to the children that didnt get on with school dinners for all sorts of reasons. So they are more likely to be based on what a child will eat at school that can be stored rather than a reflection of the overall diet. We had one child who had monster much and a biscuit everday. His asd meant that was all he could cope with in school at that time.

@wagtailred

School dinners tend to be nutritious and have everything balanced across a week but based on the idea the child eats the main each day and eats all the elements. The reality is a lot ends up in the bin if the child gets no choice, or they chose things that arent balanced in the same way, like jacket potato with cheese every day. Fish day creates a lot of waste. (Even the cakes are healthy versions that get left)

My son is at primary school so the choice is vegetarian or non-vegetarian meal. If he had school dinners they would provide 1.5 portions of veg per week! As he would need the vegetarian meals he would have three days where his meal contained barely any protein at all.

The meals are around 3/4 carbs, that isn’t good for anyone, the lack of fibre is also very bad for their bowels. Despite it being free the majority of children in infants take a pack up.

Tbh, schools should maybe concentrate less on micro-managing the contents of lunchboxes and maybe consider improving the generally awful conditions in which children have to eat their lunches.

It doesn’t matter what I put in DS’s lunchbox. If he’s on 4th sitting, he’ll spend the entirety of lunchtime queuing (they even make the kids with packed lunches wait until the school dinners have been served) and have about 5 minutes to eat whatever he can manage to stuff down himself. He’ll then be starving all afternoon.

There’s quite a lot of research that shows that the obsession with the nutritional aspects of lunch had displaced attention on the (really important) social aspects. Children often can’t get to eat with their friends (if they’re on different kinds of lunch). Many children worry that they’ll miss out on playtime so they leave much more than they otherwise would. There is usually neither the time nor space for children to actually try new things or learn table manners.

But, hey, the important thing is that there are no crisps in that lunchbox. That’s what matters here.

Just because the raw ingredients of a meal are healthy on paper doesn't mean they end up being healthy on the plate.
Fish = healthy. Deep fried battered fish = not so healthy.
Carrots = healthy
Carrots boiled to a flavourless mush = not so healthy

Is there not a salad bar they are supposed to pick from to increase their veg intake?

Which was my point that most kids dont so its the nutition standard is based on a fiction that the child took some cucumber, tomato, sweetcorn and chopped carrots from the salad bar.

I agree they are carb heavy - many ofthe meals have 50% of their calories provided in the pudding!

Dd1 has school meals and they are pretty good actually (I posted yesterday) and she likes them. She will eat more or less anything and is not fussy in any way. However she does eat quite slowly. Therefore she doesn't finish her lunch because her friends finish quicker and go out to play and so she leaves her lunch half eaten to go and play with them. This is why she comes home starving.
School gove a sticker to any child who finishes their lunch which I actually object to because I think that can encourage overeating, however it would be better if the children had to remain seated for at the table for say 20 mins before being let out to play to give them time to eat properly. This won't happen though because of limited canteen space and the need to get hundreds of children through lunch in an hour. The entire system needs a rethink and a lot of money to sort it out.

My children's packed lunches probably didn't look great, but so much healthy food got wasted, I stopped putting it in.

Strawberries would go mushy, so they didn't want to eat them, bananas would make the lunchbox smell apparently. Apples took too long to eat.

Somethings like cheese and yoghurt they wouldn't want to eat at room temperature.

Some food other kids would say was smelly so they didn't want to take it.

Other food like cashew nuts, peanut butter that they really like, they obviously can't take in due to allergies.

Primary had some strange rules re school dinners like you couldn't have a jacket potato with just beans, only beans and cheese and my one son hates cheese, so that didn't always work out well.

I think as long as they're eating a decent food at home, a packed lunch is only one meal out of a whole day.

@ExtremelyBoldSquirrels that is really interesting. Such a shame that it is all so rushed :(

In 2006 only 55%, and in 2016 only 52% of lunches contained dairy, which, as you say, is not necessarily a bad thing. But later in the paper they find that only 64% (2006) and 65% (2016) of lunches contained the recommended levels of calcium, which is probably a bad thing

But that means that more lunchboxes had enough calcium than had dairy, so it's entirely possible to get enough calcium without dairy on a daily basis.

This won't happen though because of limited canteen space and the need to get hundreds of children through lunch in an hour. The entire system needs a rethink and a lot of money to sort it out.

I've long thought schools need to do staggered lunches and return to onsite kitchens. I can't see either happening, mostly due to money.

The whole education system needs to change tbh. Everything about it could do with a shake up. Right now it seems neither to work for children, parents or school staff.