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?

Are these kids doing a days work!

There's plenty of toddlers in nursery every day 8.30 - 5.30, having lovely busy days of free play/ crafts/garden time/after lunch yoga etc.

They probably get hungrier than my 9-5 job sitting at a laptop writing emails/inputting data/making phone calls.

Our school is still using covid as an excuse to provide hot snack meals like pizza/tikka wraps/burgers instead of proper meals.

I do agree about portion sizes - British portions are definitely larger than French or Spanish ones. Possibly related to a colder climate and the fact that the British are generally larger people (I’m not talking about fatness, I mean stature). And the fact that smoking is much more prevalent than in the UK.

It’s certainly not simply because we’re all greedy fat pigs with no willpower and our Mediterranean neighbours are all responsible, health-conscious consumers.

@MadameHeisenberg

that the general attitude to food is much healthier than it is in the UK

How do you know? Are are you just extrapolating to France from your own experience of Spain?

I disagree, it isn’t ‘much’ healthier. Overall the general food culture probably is healthier, but not because of any kind of moral superiority. Historically, the abundance of fruit and vegetables available in France or Spain across the year is far greater than a Northern European island like the UK. For example, olive oil was (and still is to an extent), a luxury in the UK, not a staple like in France and Spain.

I've lived in a variety of countries, including France for a short period of time, and the UK for several years. I've worked in UK schools, I know a little bit what I'm talking about.

I'm not saying the food culture is healthier because of moral superiority. It's exactly because the reasons you state, that diets all across the continent are vastly different. A Mediterranean diet wasn't conceivable in the UK 50 years ago, and nobody is saying we should adopt one now. But there is a middle ground to be found and as we learn more about how our bodies work, we (as adults, I mean) should make it a priority to teach our children how to eat a healthy diet.

Historically, it was okay to smoke and drink in pregnancy. It was okay to not strap babies in a car seat. Etc etc etc. But now we know those things are harmful and have taken adequate action. We should also recognise that there are certain habits in how we feed our children that are a bit out of date. There are plenty of fresh ingredients available nowadays, and diets could be more balanced than they are. People aren't having to survive on meat, potatoes and cabbage for every meal anymore.

Lucky you OP, living in France. Hope as a person from these shores you are not being asked about Mr Johnson and/or Brexit too often.

French people have some pride in cooking and indeed in appearance. I wonder if there is the same difference in office/factory catering between the two countries.

@copernicium

Our school is still using covid as an excuse to provide hot snack meals like pizza/tikka wraps/burgers instead of proper meals.

To be fair my own school has this issue - reception have full options daily, but KS1 rotate - one week it is hot meal, the next it is hot grab bag meal.

It isn't school deciding this though. It's the food company.

Oh and DD in secondary takes a pack lunch as there are no veggie options unless she just has part of a meal eg potatoes and veg, or just chips.

I lived with a lovely French family for a year as an au pair. They were highly educated professionals, both doctors. They offered awful food to their kids as the kids were fussy, it was easy and they were time poor. They had prepackaged "gouter" cakes daily after school, vegetables were in the form of a weird packet powdered substance that you added water to to make puréed carrot of potato, and other than that it was plain pasta/ packaged tomato purée. Weekly trips to "Quick" as a treat (mcD's). Their poor grandmère was an amazing cook and despaired. She used to invite me regularly for lunch as I was an appreciative audience for her food 😀.

@northumberlandavenue

At the school, it's a catering company doing it (Sodexho I think) but they employ a head chef plus a team of cooks and kitchen assistants. The quality isn't great, but it's ok. So yes, they are making a profit on it somewhere. But it's like lots of people have said: there is no cultural expectation that snacks, rolls / sandwiches, crisps, chocolate etc should be eaten, so no one - not even the kids - expect to see them on offer.

@MadameHeisenberg

You're right, there are historical and geographical reasons why diets developed differently in different places (and as an aside this is also probably why traditional British pubs are so bloody wonderful - great places to go when it's cold and crappy outside) .

It probably wouldn't work (removing crap from secondary school food offerings) in the UK now. The expectation is that people can choose, and if they choose to eat crap then that's their right, and the only responsibility is that of the individual to resist the tasty, unhealthy, lovely bacon rolls. And that extends to children. It just seems like such an own goal, in terms of tackling obesity.

This is this weeks menu from my dc school, it’s not bad and the puddings have very little sugar in.
It’s £2.30 a day for a school lunch, it’s not much money

@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

It just reflect what they eat at home.

I’m ve lost count of the number of parents I know who’ve said “X only eats fish fingers and chicken nuggets” or “I have to make three different meals or they wouldn’t eat”

In fact, just look at threads on here.

I was talking about this with my dad the other day I think some people (talking about adults) tend to be "I don't like it" when it's not their absolute favourite thing So if I only ate my favourite things, I would live off pizza and cake Do I enjoy salad and veg? Not particularly but I eat them because I know I have to! I could easily say "I don't like peppers/lettuce/mushrooms" because I don't really but I see them as things I have to eat

DS2’s primary school has a decent menu, with everything cooked in house. DS1 has just started secondary, and I’m horrified. You can check up what they’ve chosen on the app, and every day he’d be having something like a sausage roll for break, a BLT sandwich for lunch, with a doughnut and a cookie 😱 Upon interrogation, it transpired that there are, of course, always main meals, but only a couple of options, always chips, very rarely any proper vegetables, and a lot of stuff runs out early. (It took photos from him and some discussion on the parents’ FB group for me to believe how bad it really is). After a lot of nagging he will now opt for something like pasta, but he sent me a photo, and it’s still just a scoop of pasta with, I assume, ready made sauce in a cardboard tray- with a wooden chip fork to eat it with!! The private caterers obviously don’t want to “fork out” (see what I did there? 😆) for someone to wash dishes. A main meal is £2.20, but what the company does to maximise its profits is offer loads of tempting stuff on the side- pizza, sausage rolls, waffles, cookies, which the kids will obviously go for- and not display the prices! And the prices of the junk are proportionally higher than those of the main meals, so kids are involuntarily overspending.

Since DS has been attending that school, I have noticed that he has no appetite for the simple stuff I give him for tea- for example home made vegetable soup and home made bread- but that he’s increasingly badgering me for sugary treats, even though he will usually have had one or two cakes/ cookies during the course of the day. That fucking catering company have literally changed his palate and got him hooked on sugar 😡

@ThePlumVan

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.

But surely they don't need a dessert every day and water or squash to drink would free up much of the budget for the best ingredients available on the budget.

Make the meals from pulses, seasonal vegetables, eggs, cheaper meat like chicken thighs, bread and it shouldn't be that hard to achieve a decent meal on a small budget and leave enough for fruit and the occasional dessert.

A school near me has 20mins for lunch. By the time the kids are out of lessons and have ordered the meal, there can't be much time to eat it before the nest warning bell goes. It's no wonder that the kids stock up in the supermarkets on junk food...

@Flickflak

In Australia, parents largely send lunch and snacks and tuck shop (canteen) is a treat for some. There is also an enforced fruit and vege break in primary where your child is only allowed said fruit and vegetables for that particular ten minute recess, eaten in class and monitored by the teacher. I send along carrot sticks, green beans, cucumber etc.

Why don’t all these concerned parents send lunch in (if they can afford it) rather than relying on the school?

It doesn’t solve the obesity problem as so many parents supply shit food other than fruit and vege break, but for those who do want to do the right thing there’s an easy solution!

I don’t understand hand ringing about school supplied food when you could supply your own. It’s not hard.

Agree. I’m from New Zealand but live in England and we always had packed lunches as there was no such thing as school meals being provided. In secondary school there was a very small canteen outlet where you could buy sandwiches, rolls, pies and other junk food but most kids seem to have this as a one or twice a week treat (this was late 80’s).

If parents object to school food then they can always provide their own lunches (obviously if they can afford it).

I think it’s deep rooted attitudes towards food. We treat good food and bad food as a treat. We should always have good food bad/fast food is just something to enjoy now and then. And good food can be made cheaply but it takes effort. We excuse constant laziness around food and we shouldn’t

I don’t know why we are so fearful of child being hungry for a while yet have bought into this idea that they must always be full

So a mixture of reasons but we don’t on the whole have such a healthy relationship with food

I work in a secondary. The cooks have learned over the years that if they make the menu more healthy the kids just don't eat it. Unfortunately many kids aren't raised with salad/veg/fish/fresh meat as part of their diet so they just don't eat it.

Cost is also a big factor...a bag of frozen chips is much cheaper than a bag of fresh vegetables.

The French model sounds great but when I lived in France (admittedly 20 years ago now) the lunch break was 2 hours long. In my school it's 45 minutes and if you happen to be at the back of the queue in canteen you'll only get 10 minutes to eat because the whole school has lunch at the same time.

@tiredanddangerous

Lunch break at the primary school my youngest just left is 2.25 hours long! That’s taking it a bit far. Its like this so that the school days accords with the working day. With morning and after school care thé ‘school day’ can extend from 07h30 to 18h30, with a two hours lunch break. At my DSs collège (middle school) it’s 1,5 hours.

How big are French schools? My DDs primary has 450 pupils the secondary around 1000. (The college about 2000 apparently. The local chippy does very good business)

If parents object to school food then they can always provide their own lunches (obviously if they can afford it).

While I think eventually I'm going to have to do this, I sure as hell don't fucking want to. I'm a working single mum and I've got enough on my plate already (pun intended) without: shopping for packed lunch ingredients, overseeing packed lunch preparation, ensuring lunchbox gets emptied and washed every night, cooking a full meal every night after we get back from after school clubs pick up at 5.00ish.

School meals were supposed to be a godsend- and in primary, they were

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

It varies, like the U.K. we live city centre so the primary they went to is about 350. Thé school I work in has over 2000, but that’s a primary, collège and lycée combined. Maybe another difference is that collège aged children (12-15) are not allowed to leave school at lunchtime without parents permission. So they have to eat on site.

@Whatwouldscullydo

Also, forcing a child to eat something they dislike is wrong, no matter how healthy you think the food is, and even if everyone else is eating it. The obsession with conformity and all children doing exactly the same thing regardless of their needs and preferences is really pronounced in some schools. It's not good for anyone

This is such a proveleged attitude though.

None of us grew up with options like a restaurant surely ? There were times i had no dinner because I didn't like it at home.
Sometimes food is just fuel fir the day. If you are hungry eat it. If not leave it. Not everything has to be be delicious and what you want all the time.

I'm not suggesting restaurant options. Just that if a child doesn't like tomato but will eat all the other salad vegetables, why insist he or she has to have the tomato too? School meals should have a few options, including vegetarian, etc, and if a child doesn't like one element of the meal, they shouldn't be made to eat it. There should be plain bread/fruit/yogurt available so that nobody goes back to class hungry, as that's not conducive to learning.

There's a big difference between 'this doesn't taste delicious' and 'this tastes horrible to me and I can't eat it'.

@HalfShrunkMoreToGo

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

So 3 days in a week vegetarian option is quorn! Ultra Processed rubbish

But all these options cost money. Wouldn't one universally acceptable well done meal be better than providing 4 or 5 options that are done on the cheap and frankly disgusting amd inedible half the time.