Why is food in schools so bad the U.K.?

[workwoes123]

This may count as a TAAT but it’s more a thread inspired by a thread .

I’m British, I remember fairly crap school dinners in the 1980s. fizzy juice on tap, chips most days. But that was 30 years and an obesity crisis ago.

I live in France now and my kids are in french schools. There are no snacks, no breakfasts, no vending machines, no play pieces. School dinner is a salad starter, a main course with meat / fish / chicken plus veg and carbs, followed by cheese / yoghurt and fruit / occasional dessert. That’s it, for a school day that starts at 8am and finishes at 4:30pm. Today the menu was:

Green salad / tomato pasta salad / beetroot salad
Beef stew / cod in curry sauce with mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables
Cheese or yoghurt
Fruit or isles flottantes (meringue on custard).

I’ve just been on a thread where children in a U.K. secondary school are being offered chocolate croissants for breakfast, bacon / sausage sarnies as a snack (a snack!), iced buns as an afternoon snack. Is this normal? All of this is in addition to a the actual school lunch? Why are the children so hungry that they need snacks as well as a meal?

Did Jamie Oliver not sort all this out? I had this vague idea that school food in the U.K. had improved since I were a lass - has it?

I’m British, I remember fairly crap school dinners in the 1980s. fizzy juice on tap, chips most days. But that was 30 years and an obesity crisis ago.

I went to school in the 1960s/70s. Water to drink. No chips, no options, no fat kids.

The amount to spend per child is shocking.
Children won’t eat half of it.
Parents support the children in not eating it.

This.

Budget, and plenty of kids who won’t eat a wide range of food.

It's a bit of a generalisation to say all school meals in the UK are bad. Firsty, they vary so much depending on where you are/whether the contract is external or if the school do their own in house catering. Secondly, Jamie Oliver focused on Primary age school meals, where the school meal standards are very different from Secondary.

Some do chicken nuggets and chips whilst others work bloody hard to provide healthy, balanced, nutritious meals.

I’ve just been on a thread where children in a U.K. secondary school are being offered chocolate croissants for breakfast, bacon / sausage sarnies as a snack (a snack!), iced buns as an afternoon snack. Is this normal? All of this is in addition to a the actual school lunch? Why are the children so hungry that they need snacks as well as a meal?

No this isn't the norm at all. I work in a school
In an incredibly deprived area so we offer toast in the mornings to everyone which helps inclusion. Dc's school don't do this, ours is a school specific initiative. At work dc are asked to bring their own mid morning snack but we provide fruit/rice cakes because many parents don't/can't afford to send one. DC's school they bring their own snack, nothing is provided. One small healthy item encouraged. I don't see anything wrong with a mid morning snack. Then they have lunch and that's it.

@workwoes123

But why is it like this? When there is an obesity crisis in the U.K.? Isn’t it an obvious thing to target?

Because ultimately a hungry child won't learn and many won't eat anything else

@DementedPixie is that high school or primary? That's a terrible menu for either. Is there never any dairy free options? The veg options are bad enough

The French school lunch is so much more than just a meal and sounds AMAZING (or it is where my niece and nephew go but I gather very typical). They all sit down together for a 3 course meal, cutlery, table cloths and napkins all used properly. Food very much as described above - salad or vegetable starter, main course with lean protein often fish with a side of varied and lovely sounding veg, some sort of grain or occasionally potato but never fried, sometime cheese & crackers, often a fruit salad, occasionally a small slice of a homemade tart and a piece of baguette offered. Water in glasses for all. Portions are modest but more than adequate, children all eat and talk together at the table and wait until everyone is done and it's really quite a leisurely affair. I'm sure there are some children who struggle with this but my DS isn't aware of any and said it's just the cultural norm there and no one questions it. Like I said, AMAZING

I’m jealous. No school meals at Australian schools. It was all packed lunches and with the heat you couldn’t pack anything too fancy (didn’t have all the fancy insulated lunchboxes in the 80’s)

My primary school did do hot lunches for the preschool attached to our school. We used to hang over the stairs inhaling the delicious cooking smells (while acknowledging when we were in nursery, we weren’t terribly keen on the food).

Because schools get £3 to give kids £4 worth of food and they can't so they do their best.

@dementedpixie

I'm in Scotland and that's not the norm in our local secondary schools

I am also in Scotland and I think the opposite. The food is bad and many of the kids are fat.

I was at school in the 00s and it wasn’t that great then. Burgers, cheese panini, pizza, chips, definitely bacon sarnies for breakfast every day if you wanted one or things like currant teacakes with lashings of butter. Very few were overweight though, I think we were all kept quite active purely just walking around the school which was huge with lots of flights of stairs. One lesson could be one side of the building and the following lesson the complete other side so you’d definitely get lots of steps in just doing that.

I think Jamie Oliver tried to improve things but it’s obviously fizzled out now. My DC’s options are naff, they tend to get the same thing every day because it’s all they like and it’s usually a baked potato which isn’t so bad.

I can't comment on the secondary options; DD appears to exist on coffee and toast and I suspect other options are available.
As some pps have said, this is largely a parental issue. When a change was attempted, parents complained. Many children start school unable to use cutlery (and I'm not talking about just cutting up their food) and look at anything other than beige food with mistrust.
If you only read MN you would think the nation was being raised on hummus and kale. In reality, some parents seem even more disconnected from parenting than at any point in my 25 year teaching experience and much as they may complain about school lunch for a short time, they would complain more if the menu changed significantly.

My DDs have been at four schools.

1. Only a cold lunch provided... but school was 7.30-13.00 so the free 'lunch' was provided due to the free meals for Infants (they had no canteen or kitchen as lunch wasn't part of the day). Basically a large snack at 11am.

School 2: fresh food cooked on site daily. 2 options, meat and vegetarian. Apparently some days better than others depending on what the kids liked. Parents ordered ahead each term, four week menu.

School 3: cooked onsite, but provided by local catering company. Parents booked individual meals on an app. Again DDs reported some stuff better than others. 1 meat, 1 veg, 1 jacket potato, 1 sandwich option.

Current school: its a mystery. They don't really publish the menu. Its all or nothing, so mine have packed lunches everyday. They weren't overly impressed with the Christmas Dinner.

I was at school in the 80’s and there was no fizzy drinks served. In fact water was the only option at primary school for dinner, with milk at morning break.
I’ve never heard of any school having an afternoon break, like you stated in your first post, and I work in schools.

JO tried but look at the backlash - kids refusing to try food, parents handing crap food through the fence. There are so many children with intolerances, to fish, eggs,dairy, dislikes of veg etc. The example above where children sit at tables with cutlery, napkins etc and eat a proper meal sounds brilliant - lots more to learning than sitting in a classroom.

School lunches were pretty good when I was at school, lots of veg, chips only on Friday. We sat at large round tables with a staff member at each table and two of the older children at each table served the lunch from serving dishes on to everyone's plates (there was a thread on this type of serving pattern a while ago and some were up in arms that children were being'used' to serve the lunches ). We were encouraged to chat, good table manners were modelled and praised.

Ours are fine (not as nice as the food at nursery but fine)

Main, veggie, and jacket potato option everyday, plus a salad bar. Optional pudding or fruit.

Fairly standard "family food" type options - spag bol, sweet and sour chicken, roast on Wednesdays, fish on Fridays.

My dad (workd in local primary schools) says the portions are generous.

The infants get free fruit/veg snacks at break time.

My friend's sil joined a group about making changes to school dinners and a few years later one about hospital dinners. All you have to do is look at the food recommendation threads on mn to know it's a losing battle because nobody can come up with a solution. Someone said above you would think everyone on mn fed their children hummus and kale, that was the sort of recommendations everyone came up with and they were aghast at and basically bullied out the people who said the couldn't eat their recommendations. Of course schools shouldn't have things like fish fingers and chips or nuggets and chips. Saying that I'd say it's so difficult to find a middle ground all children would eat without being pushed to it.

I remember the canteen at my school. No vegetables and everything fried. I hope it’s better now.

I worked at a school in Japan and it was so healthy. Every student gets the same meal. Wouldn’t work here with so many fussy eaters. They also got a little education on the food they were eating. The different food groups, vitamins etc.

It's shit.

Timetabling issues mean my teens only get 30 mins for lunch. No where near enough time to eat and chat.
The school that was 1st on my preference list years ago was there because they give an hour for lunch.

There was minimum nutrition standards and rules for primary which I think are still in place for LA controlled ones. Academies can do what they like.

Secondaries had similar in the later noughties and then Gove removed them. So when I started teaching it was awful food. Then got loads better with the Jamie Oliver push and new rules. We had jacket potatoes with decent fillings, pasta and homemade sauces, a decent hot choice every day. Fresh fruit was always available and pupil premium kids got the "full meal" of roast or whatever hot meal, pud and fruit. Even the pizza was wholemeal and the topping sauce was made with roasted veg.

Now, with changes in political motivation, lack of funding etc.....back to chips, plasticky pizza etc and so expensive!

When I was at primary school the meals were made fresh every day. You had a meal like minced beef in gravy, mash and veg, with a pudding like sponge and custard.
The potatoes were peeled and mashed, the vegetables were prepared and cooked, the gravy was not instant, it was made. The custard was made with milk and the sponge made and cooked. Nothing was heated up. But these days the schools don’t tend to have proper cooking facilities, or the staff to do it. It’s heat it up and Chuck it out.

My sil runs a school kitchen at a secondary school.
The rules are very strict about what food can be served.
There are no bacon butties, iced fingers.
She is not allowed to use salt.
In fact if salt was found in her kitchen she would be sacked.
Like most chefs Jamie Oliver puts salt in lots of food.
The company that own the kitchen expect sil to make 60% profit a week!

The only time pupils buy the salads is in January when all the girls are on diets.
She can’t do anything about the cafe opposite that sells all the junk the children crave.

French school meals reflect what goes on at home.
Family meals, fresh produce.

British schools have an uphill struggle as many parents have a houseful of junk food and mealtimes are not as defined. The pupils are being given strange food and won’t eat it.

@whattodo2019 ds primary menu is about the same as that too. Fish and chips every Friday, the chicken curry is that mayflower powder stuff made with water.

They too don’t have a kitchen on site, all food is made at the senior school next door and brought over - they need to feed the masses for a tiny cost.

I was a cook at a secondary school and in all honesty the children just won't pick the healthy option.