to think that this is a pretty shocking school dinner?

[anchovies]

Today my boys had Caribbean style chicken with spaghetti hoops and garden peas. Pink sponge and custard. Strawberry milkshake.

£1.90 a day.

Thought there must have been some sort of mistake but have just checked the published menus and that is what they had planned for today. Only other main meal was the vegetarian option which they are not allowed (again with peas and spaghetti hoops.) Could have chosen fruit for dessert.

Mentioned it earlier to my neighbour who also has children who have school dinners and she thought it was fine as "the carbohydrate is in the spaghetti hoops".

Wrote (yet another) email to our local council but am now thinking I may be wrong?

Sounds lazy.

OP can you post the week's menus so we can see if this is a one off or at least not very common. The menus Hulababy posted are much more what I expected primary schools to offer, tbh. I don't mind spaghetti hoops and pink sponge every so often, personally (and reminds me of what we ate as kids in the 70s so I can't really complain), but that particular combination sounds yuck!

My friend used to have spaghetti with tinned pasta hoops as the sauce on top. Yuck yuck yuck.

It does seem a slightly random combination (I agree rice instead of pasta would be more normal/authentic with the chicken), but I don't think any of the components are particularly bad in themselves, and wouldn't see it as something worth complaining to the council over .

Once my daughter was given tinned tuna, a piece of bread and ice cream. In December, with snow on the ground and no heating in school.

For financial reasons I have stopped my dc having school dinners. I was feeling guilty that their pack lunch was not as filling or satisfying as a cooked school meal. You have changed my mind OP! I think I can make a far healthier pack lunch than the crap you have just read out as the school meal!

Ds2 is in yr 5 and has school dinners, though at his school they have a wristband scheme, whereby they pick what meal they want for lunch in the morning, and are given a wristband colour coded with the meal of their choice. They are allowed to choose a vegetarian option even if they are not a vegetarian. However, ds regularly comes home complaining about either the portion size (being miniscule) or the taste/way it looks.

I know he is not alone in his complaints, as his TA's have also reported back to me saying the same thing, and at one point so many parents were unhappy with the standard of the food that there was a temporary improvement , but sadly short lived. I now send ds in with some extra home made snacks to keep him going until the end of school (ds is a wheelchair user and has full 1 to 1 assistance, and the extra physical effort he needs to put in to his school day, compared to his peers, means he gets tired usually around the middle of the school day).

Fortunately the school is v understanding about this and he is allowed to bring in something more substantial than the general school rule of only fruit or cheese, so as long as his snacks are nut free the school are fairly lenient as to what he has.

According to ds the meals have gone downhill since a new cook took over. Ds gets a hot meal every evening at home, so isnt relying on that being his main meal of the day, but there must be children to whom it IS their main meal for whatever reason, and it isnt really good enough for that, sadly.

The leaflets that get sent home with the dinner menus on them always sound and look a lot more appealing than the food that turns up on the plates of the kids at lunchtime.

spaghetti hoops and peas...

yummy

Kids in my home area get their Friday school dinner in a paper bag. It's hotdog or burger with chips and a muffin. Some schools even let them sit on the floor to eat it.

Now that I was at. Generally dinners round here are revolting.

On Friday DS had Pasta, Potatoes and Peas for lunch, apparently all the meat was gone ...while joking with him that it must have been 'P' day at school I was thinking how cheeky the school were to EVER comment about what goes into children's packed lunches.

Will be keeping an eye on things in September but with only 12 days of school left this year I can't be arsed feel the staff have other things to think about. He's only had dinners since March at school and they seem pretty good, just once every couple of weeks he has something random because he's in the last class in for dinner!

Last week my DS had pilau rice and brussell sprouts (they offered chicken tikka but he didnt want it because he said it was too watery) and a jelly. I pay £2.00 a day for that.

YANBU, school dinners are shit. DS1 now has packed lunch after just having sweetcorn and icecream for two days running and I was paying £2.00 a dat for the privilege . He is allergic to tomatoes and milk which seemend to cause some problems as tomatoes seem to be included in every meal in some shape or form.

I agree, some of the menu choices they offer are a little strange.

Am I the only one who doesn't fret about school dinners? I mean, you can control what your kids eat completely if you want to - give them a packed lunch, acting like a demented Customs officer in reverse, hiding in the bushes at hometime to make sure they don't divert to the shops for junk and micro-managing whatever they pop in their mouths from the minute they walk through the door...

Or you can let them eat whatever meal the school provides, ask them what it was when they get home and just stabilise it with some extra fruit/veg/carbs/fats/proteins (delete as appropriate) in their evening meal/snack.

I never cease to be amazed at the parents who seem to enjoy picking apart everything the school does... from the teaching to the lunchtime supervision, to the dinners, to the games/sports.. anything and for any excuse.

I used to have pink 'custard' at school sometimes... I managed to grow up without being nutritionally deficient somehow...

lying - i so agree with you. and oddly enough, i have wonderful memories of my early school years and one of them was the school dinners especially the sponge and custard deserts (although i hated liver and cheese pie).

Though the junior school seems to have rotten meals, the secondary school ds1 attends is actually v good.

It operates on a cashless system. All pupils have a lunch card, the same size as a credit card, to which they add money to by using a top up machine in the school reception. At lunchtime they have a serve yourself policy, where the prices are clearly displayed. Once they have chosen their food their card is swiped and the cost deducted. It also tells you how much credit you have left, and if needed, you can ask the school to give you a print out of what your child has been spending the money on. You can also impose a limit, if you want, for the maximum amount your child is allowed to spend per day.

The food does seem to be of a better quality compared to the junior school meals imo, though for families who qualify for free school meals they are still only credited 1.90 per day, and there is v little choice in that price range, so adding on an extra fiver a week is probably necessary.

paisley... I'm guessing that was 'liver' at one meal and 'cheese pie' at another? Either that or jajas is right - child cruelty indeed!

School dinners were fab in my day - I loved the plates - melamine in pastel colours, pink, blue, green and yellow... I used to manoeuvre myself in the queue so that I had a pink or blue one, it didn't really matter what was on it.

I remember semolina and tapioca, not fondly, but the colour of the plate made it all ok somehow... halcyon days. :)

I'll bet the kids loved it and its fine nutritionally.

The menu examples given just seem so random and bizarre. My ds in his UK school had food centred around the meat and two veg, fish and potato wedges, pasta tomato sauce variety. Pudding was oftern cake and custard, jelly and custard, lollies in summer. £2.00 a day was fair for that, but I'd be a bit miffed if my money was going on a catering tin of cheapo hoops!

I like ds to have a pudding at lunch. And i would stick the menu leaflet on the fridge to make sure I didn't repeat pasta, jackets etc on the day for tea and note when he had a choccy pud. It's not hard is it? If they have a sticky pud for lunch just give them fruit, yoghurt for tea.

Where we live now lunch is the biggest meal with two hours dedicated to it. I agree with the babying of foods, i can't stand it, just give a scaled down adult menu - slightly less spicy, or easily digestible fish or meat.

Lunch for ds is now an eyewatering £5.40 a day! To be fair it is cooked from scratch in a 4 star restaurant and brought up to the kids! i have offered to volunteer with the serving and clearing up of left overs

Apparently the chef has commented that he enjoys the challenge of feeding them and that the kids are his most discerning customers!

"I disagree, I do not think it is fine nutritionally in any shape or form. This is why we have so many problems with obesity in this country because people think it is 'normal' to have pink sponge, custard and milkshake!"

Oh good lord - its for kids, you shovel calories down one end of them and make them run around enough and they are fine, they are converting nearly everything into growth.

Finicky parents projecting their own needs and desires are the bane of kids nutrition these days.

And its not the school food that's causing child obesity, its the lack of exercise and sport and crap food in the home.

"Oh good lord - its for kids, you shovel calories down one end of them and make them run around enough and they are fine, they are converting nearly everything into growth. "

My goodness! You think saturated fats and processed sugars are ok because they'll burn off the calories? Let's not worry about their hearts then You do know that there are high energy healthy foods don't you? No need for crisps, cake and chocolate. People really are in lala land about our unhealthy diets in the UK.

Omigawd- totally agree with your post. Too much joyless control freakery about.

Occasional sweets and puddings provided some happy memories from my childhood. The joys of buying Blackjacks and Sherbert dipdabs and the thrill of yellow and green jelly and pink custard (not together)- it all stays with me. However, that does not mean I never ate veg or fruit or that I sat on my arse all day. Everything in moderation is fine.

Just because my son's face lights up at the sight of trifle or sweets doesn't make him destined for a life of diabetes and obesity. He has it sometimes and is very active and energetic. Food police are more likely to give kids food issues, not less likely if you ask me.

Well, look at the kids from the 70s and see how many were fat then. There might have been one plumper child in a class but not more than that. It's a common sight now so that blows the 'unhealthy diets' theory out of the water. It's a big concern that this generation of cihldren will die before their parents.

"People really are in lala land about our unhealthy diets in the UK."

No, people are in Lala land about kids' need for exercise.

And stop exagerrating - the described diet was hardly a saturated fat-fest of crisps, cake and chocolate - lunch was chicken, peas and pasta with a sweet and a milkshake - the sort of stuff that generations of kids have had.