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?

@jesusmaryjosephandtheweedonkey

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

Exactly this.

At our secondary school it would be possible to make healthy choices, as salads, jacket potatoes, vege pasta, fruit etc are all available. But what 12-year-old is going to choose that when at the same time, there are bacon rolls, waffles, chips, paninis, cookies, cheese naans available at breaktime and lunch?

It's representative of the countries attitude to food overall really, our supermarkets are full of crap, processed shite that seems to be a daily feature in many peoples diets rather than occasional treats as intended- absolutely not surprised this is reflected in school meals (sadly).

A lot of it does come down to money re ingredients and choices. Just a £ or two more per child budget could be £1000 a lunch. I teach in a private school (in the UK) and the food's not that different to the French catering described. We have an hour for lunch but it's unusual for anyone to linger over it because there are lots of clubs to run/attend. I can't say the younger ones eat the vegetables and salad, but it's there.

I think as well as the attitude to food and eating being different, the expectations of schools in the two countries are totally different. Colleagues in the French system have told me there's little requirement to do pastoral care, deal with parents etc -- that's what we spend 90% of our "spare" time doing. No time to think about good food!

There are no school meals at all in Australia.

Sometimes charities and volunteers go to some schools before the first bell and give out breakfast, especially in poorer areas where the children may not have any food for the day.

Many teachers will either from their own pocket or from the staff room emergency loaf give a Vegemite sandwich/similar to those who haven’t any food during the day.

I always took a packed lunch (usually water, a Vegemite or lettuce sandwich and piece of fruit), as we didn’t have the money for getting food from the canteen (used to be pies, sausage rolls, toasted sandwiches - now it is sushi, salads and wraps).

I have experience of French school food too and wish similar decent food was eaten successfully here. I wonder whether JO’s initiative didn’t take off because so many are already used to processed food as normal and don’t adapt to the switch?
Whatever the reason for many of our schools having poor nutrition , no wonder our health system is breaking. Our DC’s school has actually been quite good, there seems a nutritionist involved and for example they only have puddings if it involves fruit.

Lunch at my son’s school is normally fine and healthy enough, although I don’t know how much of it he actually eats. Don’t all infant children get free fruit at break too?

However the previous chef left at Christmas and they can’t find anyone to replace her. The company can’t provide cover because of so many Covid absences.So they’ve just have a sandwich and a yoghurt delivered every day now. It’s a bit shit but I don’t know what else they can do.

I can only speak about the schools I've worked in in Lambeth and Southwark. All the food is made from scratch, includes lots of vegetables, no salt and no fried food. They are only allowed chips once a week and the only processed thing on the menu is the fish fingers they have with them on a Friday.

In Southwark where I work now school meals are free until the end of year 6. Most parents opt for that. A very few have packed lunches. We still have the highest rates of childhood obesity and tooth decay in London so I'd suggest that school meals aren't really the problem.

@workwoes123 what is the daily cost of the school meals in France? How does funding work? My niece and nephew were briefly in school there and I vaguely remember hearing the food was indeed great but cost them a fortune... maybe they weren't entitled to funding as they weren't French...?

Haha I grew up in Scotland and in high school people would get a half pizza supper for lunch - deep fried pizza and chips. My English friends were horrified at this.

I work in a primary now and I don't think the meals are too bad. The puddings are tiny and have very little sugar in them or are yoghurt/fruit. It's misleading when people talk about children getting cake for pudding at school - if you were served this cake in a cafe you'd absolutely send it back! It's virtually savory.

I think we need to distinguish between primary and secondary school in this discussion. My experience of primary school has been that the food is healthy (just poor quality, and tasteless due to the restrictions on salt and sugar), but it all goes to pot in secondary school where, while healthy food might be available, there are high-fat, processed, high sugar 'fast-food' options available at every turn.

@minipie

*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 is all of this , at my dds secondary they did bring in a new chef and dd says most of the lunches consist of chili concarne , some sort of curry or pizza . which is great for kids that like spicy food , but dd would rather starve than eat it , shes so fussy anyway and id love her to be less so , but as it is she takes in her own lunches which are way cheaper than paying for the dinners i remember when she was in juniors and just seeing the cost of school dinners was enough , it was cheaper to just buy food for packed lunches as it is mostly everyone she knows that has the school dinners in her secondary are the kids that get them free , all the other kids bring in their own apart from the chillies and currys , the pizza and on fris i thinks its hamburgers and chips isnt really healthy i would have to agree with op , esp when as memorable lunchtime came one of the very overweight boys in her form helped himself to the extra pizza they were offering out , not just seconds ,but thirds

I don't think funding would even help, many schools do have healthy options but not much uptake. In primary although the food isn't exactly ground breaking its usually made within certain nutritional parameters. Changing entrenched attitudes to food goes a lot further than school meals, and to be honest it's not just to do with healthy food being more expensive (which isn't always the case), but it's almost cultural. People would just start sending in packed lunches etc if they felt the options weren't stuff their children would eat. I do wonder with the emergence of snacks and brunch type foods how much is to make the school some extra £££ as their funding has been cut to the bone.

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

Same here.
The main issue is underfunding. Also lack of time. School lunch breaks are less than an hour here, so there would be no time to eat a three course meal. DD used to take packed lunch to school because the vegetarian options either weren't very nice or they had run out.

I don't think the food is bad, we've also had the recipes shared and there are a lot of healthy substitutions especially in the puddings where grated veg is used to replace sugar. This is the menu at DDs primary school

I think England has a weird idea of what constitutes 'fresh' or 'homecooked'. My dcs school serves microwaved jacket potatoes, baked beans from a can, processed frozen fish, and chicken curry with jar sauce. Yet they advertise all this as 'freshly cooked' because they assemble the various frozen or processed elements in the school kitchen. I see posters on mumsnet saying they cook from scratch but this includes canned tomatoes, frozen veg, or ready made sauces.

I'm not saying we should all be shelling our own peas or plucking chickens as there just isn't time for that anymore. Truly fresh, homecooked meals take bloody hours and cost a fortune and schools are not able to do that.

@HalfShrunkMoreToGo.
Why can they not put Quiche?
Cheese flan sounds so wrong to my ears.
Sorry, missing the point here.

Sounds a decent menu tbf.

C'mon over to Ireland...packed lunches all round and you can decide what they have. No such thing as school dinners here...

@HalfShrunkMoreToGo A lot of the items on that menu are ultra processed.

[quote Youngstreet]@HalfShrunkMoreToGo.
Why can they not put Quiche?
Cheese flan sounds so wrong to my ears.
Sorry, missing the point here.

Sounds a decent menu tbf.[/quote]
I wasn't sure what it was at first and thought it was a quiche same as you but it's actually got rice in it. Still can't quite imagine the texture but DD raves about how good it is.

I think we need to distinguish between primary and secondary school in this discussion. My experience of primary school has been that the food is healthy (just poor quality, and tasteless due to the restrictions on salt and sugar), but it all goes to pot in secondary school where, while healthy food might be available, there are high-fat, processed, high sugar 'fast-food' options available at every turn.

This^

Yes primary school dinners aren’t too bad but not exactly inspiring! But they get to secondary and can choose to eat pizza everyday if they wish. How many 11 year olds will choose anything else when it’s cheap (they have to manage their on budgets) and they can easily take them outside to eat with friends

@NoSquirrels

Underfunding. Cultural attitudes.

This...

Because it’s £2.50 and needs to include a drink and dessert, and it needs to be healthy and balanced, and there needs to be a choice on offer, and lots of people pay late or not at all.

@qualitygirl

C'mon over to Ireland...packed lunches all round and you can decide what they have. No such thing as school dinners here...

gosh i never knew that , god knows how the parents who sign up their kids to free school dinners would cope there lol

It’s awful and it part it’s that they are offered a rubbish alternative. My 5 year old often opts for a home sandwich and chips! But my 2 year old goes to a private nursery on the same site and lunch is provided by the same kitchen but the 2 years old don’t get a choice. So she eats things like roast chicken and vegetables, butternut squash and chickpea curry, meatball and veg pasta.