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?

@sometimespeopletakethepiss

Why do children need a pudding with their dinner? Glad I don't have kids as by the way the school dimmer system works I'd be complaining at the school daily

There's a theory ont hat variety leads to a wider appreciation of food. Restrict kids diets too much, they'll become fussy. Expose them too all types of foodz they'll develop wider tastes of food. Plus nutrient needs don't get met with eating leafy salads every day.

A bit of a nice pud also works as a bit of a reward and encouragement.

Plus, you know, their kids... Kids like puddings.. kids shouldn't be forced into the ridiculous miserable diets of grown ups just because their grown up happens to be miserable cunt that won't let them have a bit of custard.

I am very pro healthy eating, but forcing someone to eat something or giving them nothing at all smacks of control and never works for anyone
There needs to be a huge cultural change and more money spent

It would only be forcing someone if they were pinned down and had it shoved in their mouth though.

How much do you think would actually get made if we listed all the " requirements"

Pete only likes mashed potato if its made with real butter, Alice won't eat carrots I'm rounds they have to be sticks, Catherine only eats dairy lea cheese , Ricky hates peas, Oliver will only eat brown rice, Sophie won't touch spaghetti...

It would literally go on forever.

Surely if there is literally nothing they will eat you either send in a packed lunch or they make do with bread and the pudding that day.

@sometimespeopletakethepiss

Why do children need a pudding with their dinner? Glad I don't have kids as by the way the school dimmer system works I'd be complaining at the school daily

I suppose they don't actually need it but it is nice to have a pudding. I always served a pudding and it was well appreciated. I think it is only a problem if people eat too much of it.

Our school food is lovely

@jesusmaryjosephandtheweedonkey

Yes my youngest nursery is super healthy, 2 options- veggie or meat and usually a fruit pudding or what I can a pudding pudding. He’ll have a fish stew, fresh tomato soup etc and then next year at school he’ll have a load of beige shit

@EYProvider

They should just take away the choices. It would resolve the issues of cost and health in one go. However, parents wouldn’t go for it. There would always be a reason why their kids couldn’t eat what was on offer.

French parents are a lot less indulgent in my experience, hence the reason their kids are healthier and better behaved.

No choices at my daughter's school in Finland, the children moan sometimes but according to DD everyone eats anyway, they just eat a bit less if they don't like it (they serve themselves so can take as much or as little as they want but they are discouraged from throwing anything away that's left on their plate so the children who used to pile their plates high have now learnt to be more reasonable!). Never deep fried foods or chips - the "treat" meal they all look forward to once a term is spinach pancakes! Puddings only on special occasions.

Works alright in primary school but in upper school some children just skip lunch altogether when its something they don't like and go buy something from the shop.

Usual processed favourites at DSs primary. To make it worse the portion control is really poor. Lots of items are completely cleared out by the time KS1 has gone through, despite all meal choices being picked along with the morning register. One day they ran out of potatoes by yr3 meal time. DS is diabetic and had dosed his insulin for potatoes. So they gave him a cup of custard with his pie. (Now all his meals are pre plated onto his little prison tray before they let the first sitting in) It’s appalling parents are paying £2.70 a day for half a meal often. But the catering company pride themselves on their low food wastage.

@MaryAndHerNet a pudding with every meal? Seriously, it should be once a week treat at most.

No wonder we have an obesity crisis

@Dionysuss

Maybe do a packed lunch? £2.70 is a lot per day for crap.

Mines in reception so I lazily put up with it because it’s free for now

@jesusmaryjosephandtheweedonkey

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

None of the options should fall into the 'unhealthy' category though, surely.

You could argue that if kids are hungry enough, they'll choose a less familiar, less fatty/salty/sugary option, if that's all there is available and others are eating it too. Have any schools experimented with this?

In primary schools in this area, they've started shoving salad in most of the sandwich options in some kind of half-arsed attempt to get vegetables into kids. What happens in reality though is that a lot of kids remove and throw away the salad...

DS's school lunches were awesome. Well cooked, choice, variety.

Only issue potentially was that in 2005 they were £4.50. Worth every penny and cheap at the price. London independent day school. He was 8.

His state school lunches were £1.90 I think.

It really isn't rocket science.

@OnceuponaRainbow18 unfortunately you’re preaching to the choir on this one. Blood control wise it would be so much simpler with packed lunch, but they eat separately and at different times to school meals and all his friends are school dinners. DS has turned it into a massive Thing and dig his heals in. And made me look like a moron complaining about the custard situation.

I think there is an element of peer pressure at secondary school as well, sadly.

Private companies. There are seemingly no standards that they must meet. I am a teacher and I am shocked at the quality and amount provided. Utterly dreadful.

[quote sometimespeopletakethepiss]@MaryAndHerNet a pudding with every meal? Seriously, it should be once a week treat at most.

No wonder we have an obesity crisis [/quote]
We have an obesity crisis because people are clueless when it comes to a decent diet.

They restrict too many thing, they eat the wrong things, the portion sizes are huge.

A small pudding after a small meal is doing fuck all harm compared to what some people are teaching their kids and setting them up for a life long obsession with food.

Moderation and balance is all they need to know until they're adults. They don't need to learn that food is 'bad', cause it isn't, it's portion sizes that are bad.
They can learn to obsess for the next 80 years once they hit 18.

I am a kitchen assistant in a junior school and our chef is amazing! He is French trained and a dad so the menus are always healthy and tasty. On Friday we made Baked Potatoes with a choice of baked beans, ham or tuna. Served with a mixed salad (lettuce, cabbage, red peppers and cucumber), peas, corn and freshly made whole meal bread that we make every morning. Pudding was semolina pudding.

The day before was Chicken Kiev served with sautéed carrots, potato wedges, mixed salad and fresh bread. Pudding was Crackers, cheese and grapes.

We make sure that everything is made fresh and from scratch. Everything looks as good as it tastes.

[quote sometimespeopletakethepiss]@MaryAndHerNet a pudding with every meal? Seriously, it should be once a week treat at most.

No wonder we have an obesity crisis [/quote]
Pudding is subjective. Fruit, yogurt, cheese is one thing. Made from scratch crumble and custard another. Ultra processed cake is a different proposition.

Better food won’t be offered unless parents think there needs to be better food. Since our U.K. population is happy doing pastas, breaded stuff and crisps, that’s what the kids get. I love that the French kids get 3 courses.

[quote sometimespeopletakethepiss]@MaryAndHerNet a pudding with every meal? Seriously, it should be once a week treat at most.

No wonder we have an obesity crisis [/quote]
In the 60s and 70s when I was at school, there was pudding with every meal, and I can only think of one overweight person in primary, three in secondary.

[quote sometimespeopletakethepiss]@MaryAndHerNet a pudding with every meal? Seriously, it should be once a week treat at most.

No wonder we have an obesity crisis [/quote]
For some kids on free school meals, lunch is their main meal of the day. For those kids, they often genuinely do need a proper pudding.

In my experience, it all goes wrong in secondary school. Throughout infant and juniors the kids are offered healthy balanced lunches, are only allowed fruit for a snack. My eldest started secondary in September and the snacks are bloody awful. Pizza wraps, scones with clotted cream and jam, chicken burgers... this is all at snack time which is only an hour and a half before lunch. I find it shocking to be honest. I don't think snacks were even a thing when I was at school (I'm in my 40s now). They give them lessons on making healthy choices and thinking about the fat and salt content of food - and then provide that crap in the canteen! It makes NO sense.

@BreakingGood45

I am a kitchen assistant in a junior school and our chef is amazing! He is French trained and a dad so the menus are always healthy and tasty. On Friday we made Baked Potatoes with a choice of baked beans, ham or tuna. Served with a mixed salad (lettuce, cabbage, red peppers and cucumber), peas, corn and freshly made whole meal bread that we make every morning. Pudding was semolina pudding.

The day before was Chicken Kiev served with sautéed carrots, potato wedges, mixed salad and fresh bread. Pudding was Crackers, cheese and grapes.

We make sure that everything is made fresh and from scratch. Everything looks as good as it tastes.

That sounds amazing.

Everything in our schools is outsourced to a catering company. So I suspect profit is more important to them.

In the 60s and 70s when I was at school, there was pudding with every meal, and I can only think of one overweight person in primary, three in secondary.

I grew up in the 80s, we had pudding with every school meal. Often something with custard, Roly Poly, Spotted Dick, syrup steamed pudding etc. Sometimes a Bakewell tart or other little cake.
Overweight people were relatively rare back then. In my whole family, only my aunt was overweight, but she was the family cook and made all manner of things. Always had big steel pots on her oven tops, forever stirring and adding spices to something.

I do not know the exact reasons for why obesity is such a huge problem now. But as the money rolls into the pockets of gyms, weight watchers, slimming world, personal trainers, diet book writers, 'healthy' snack manufacturers etc there's plenty with a vested interest to keep people overweight.

My mum lived onto her 80s, her diet never changed and can be summed up:
Eat what you like, just don't eat too much.

There's a theory ont hat variety leads to a wider appreciation of food.
Restrict kids diets too much, they'll become fussy. Expose them too all types of foodz they'll develop wider tastes of food.

I'm just guessing, but I would think French children, who get offered a balanced weekly menu but no choice eat a more varied diet than children who have several options, but eat the same beige food every day, just because that's one of the options.

I'm sure my half-French DC would also choose chips and nuggets followed by chocolate cake if those were offered, and salads and veggies would go to waste. But as such options are not offered, they happily eat their fresh salads and healthy meals followed by cheese and fruit.

My daughter was a fantastic eater before she started school. She loved stuffed peppers, mushrooms, every fruit and veg. She wouldn't eat the lunch at school when she was in reception as it was food she hadn't eaten at home. Quorn burgers , chips, macaroni cheese. All beige stuff. Then all the teasing about her loving mushrooms etc now she won't touch the stuff. I still serve her healthy food at home but I'm so disappointed with the schools unhealthy options and the way they have changed her eating habits.

At my kids primary school and the primary school I work in, there is a chef that cooks from scratch. I wouldn't say the menu is bad at all