To think this school dinner is not good enough?

[s4sophie]

Pizza with potato wedges, peas and corn. Followed by a chocolate flavoured biscuit.
I'm happy the kids get pizza once in a while at school but this smacks of lazy unhealthy food. Not even fruit in the pudding.
Oh and they had this a couple of weeks ago but with baked beans instead of peas and corn.
Jamie Oliver wouldn't be impressed!

Baked beans count as one of your 5 a day according to the NHS thingy. And they are tasty.

It sounds a lot more healthy than what my DD takes in her packed lunch. Her school dinners are nothing to write home about though. They tend to be vegetarian which is great, they have a sizable number of Jain's at her school. DD tried them for a couple of days and decided she'd prefer my uninspired pack ups over them.

Domesticsluttery sorry I missed your post. Good idea to check the menu as I hadn't thought of that. However they still haven't printed a menu for this term.

ALso, our DD has breakfast, lunch and tea.. bu she also has two lots of snack and these are always based on fruit and veg like grapes and crackers or carot sticks or apple etc. The guidelines also advise not to look at one meal, or even one day but one week to see if it a healthy diet.

You should be able to find the menu on your coucil's website. It will be the same across the county. They run on a 3-week cycle, so Menu A will be week 1, 4, 7; Menu B 2,5; Menu C 3,6.

Baked beans, peas and sweetcorn are all fine - more than fine in fact. Frozen peas have more vitamins in them than, for example, broccoli that has been cut for more than a day and then boiled rather than steamed.

You sound a bit uptight about it to be honest, especially if you know that your child is eating your definition of a healthy diet when they are at home with you.
Children need carbs and fat, if you give them what is widely considered to be a healthy adult diet then they are probably not getting enough fat and carbs.

Well pizza, peas and corn is three of the 5 a day, so it's not bad going for only one meal! At my dd's school (and I presume many schools) the pizza is made from scratch, including the dough, so is not junk food. Do they also get to eat fruit at play time either provided by you or the school? YABU

Sounds OK. If it isn't the same every day.

Frozen veg isn't unhealthy. It often retains the vitamins better than fresh. Does your local council not have the menu on it's website as Surrey does where i live?

"However they still haven't printed a menu for this term"

Have a look on the council website, our council usually puts them up there.

Our county is very big on healthy eating and sourcing ingredients locally. But they still give them HM pizzas with oven baked wedges. The portion sizes aren't enormous, and TBH my 8 year old needs the carbs to keep him running around after the football during break time!

pizza, with peas and corn is surely 3 portions of veg? tomatoes on the pizza? cheese and bread is good and bothing wrong with a choccie biscuit. children should be encouraged to eat sweet stuff in moderation rather than prevented from eaing it at all. i presume you also serve veg at tea time? and he will be getting his fruit portions at break and by drinking aswell.

lol i was a bit when i saw the same meal on our menu, OP. imo the veggies are more likely to get eaten if they are on the pizza, rather than as a side (although i take it that they will have calculated that it's better to serve them separately rather than risk total rejection) and who serves pizza with potatoes?

Aitch - have you never ordered Pizza dn Potatoe wedges before

never. are you serious? who sells pizza and potato wedges together? (not the italians... )

no - not the Italians

My DS's love it when I order Pizza, Mozzarella sticks, garlic bread and potato wedges.

heheheh, bread, cheese, cheese, bread and potatoes.

it must be so hard for the schools to encourage kids to eat veg, i reckon, but including potato wedges with that meal just means that the good veg are going in the bin. it's an own goal of a meal imo.

A chocolate flavoured biscuit??

Blimey, I'd be straight down to the school to ask why it wasn't at least baked with 85% cocoa solids. I can see why you're angry.

the meal that me a bit on ds1's menu last week was spaghetti bolognaise with mashed potato... Just sounded a very strange combination (at least if you went out to a restaurant you wouldn't be surprised if pizza turned up with chips or garlic bread, healthy-ness aside!)

They usually have pasta with garlic bread as an extra if they have anything (and apparently bread and butter is there for them to help themselves to too so no shortage of carbs) plus salad or veg.

There again, mentioned it in passing to dh and he just said yum, pasta and mash together - he loves both so maybe it's a boys idea of a good meal

Depends on the pizza really.

If you are talking about crappy e-number laden dough with sugary tomato sauce and processed cheese then YANBU. If it is nice bread (i.e. still white but made from flour, water, oil and salt), some pureed tomatoes and a half decent cheese the YABU.

Wedges, corn, peas and beans all good.

Yes, I def question pizza being classed as 'junk' food, are cheese & tomato sandwiches 'junk' too? Maybe at home, if you buy cheap processed/frozen pizza but if home made, which i would think the school ones would be, as so much cheaper & easy for any cook, then definately not junk.

at pasta & mash, my dp would eat that too, boys love their carbs! yuk

Ah, Aitch to the rescue. Glad I'm not the only one.
I have however looked up the menu online (thanks for the suggestion) and seen that it's a 'loaded vegetable pizza', not just plain as m ds had said.
I do still think it's carb overload though and bugger all in the way of protein except a tiny bit of cheese

Although when it was served with baked beans the beans would also have provided protein.

This reminds me of a friend who insists that every main meal must include vegetables or salad or you're risking scurvy. Nutritional deficiencies won't be brought on in one afternoon - like mumblecrumble said you need to look at diet across a significant period of time to assess whether requirements are being met. Fine so pizza and veg doesn't have a whole bunch of protein in it; as long as you give scrambled eggs for breakfast one day or beans on toast for tea or steak and chips for dinner some other time then you'll get a big chunk of protein there!

If I just want toast and cereal for breakfast or a sandwich and crisps for lunch then to hell with it - I'll risk death by carbs and then have a protein and veg laden dinner!

Is fruit not a daily option anyway - it is always on the meny at DD's school and always ont he menu at the shcool I work on.

Pizza and hcips is not altogether bad. Abd beans, peas and corn are all vegetables and all count to your five a day.

The school I am at has a 4 week menu and pizza appears at least once, if not twice over the four weeks. Friay is always some from of fish with chips (or chipped potatoes on the menu).

Biscuit also not altogether wrong.

Obviously if every day it is an issue, but once a fortnight????

If you look in the Jamie Oliver books based around those series, and the Nora Sands one too you will find pizza and biscuits in them. They are not bad and they are approved off - in a balanced menu plan.