to find it difficult to believe that 'only 1% of packed lunches are as nutritious as school dinners'?

[gogoflo]

This is the statistic quoted repeatedly on the literature being sent home from school. Dc currently have packed lunch and though they'll try hot meals, tthey're keen to keep having packed lunches but school are really keen on everyone having hot meals once it's free. Just looking at the menu, tomorrow it's chilli and rice, jacket potato and beans or fish and chips followed by chocolate sponge and custard or jelly and ice cream.

Tomorrow their packed lunch will be crackers with ham, cheese and sausage, carrot, pepper, cucumber with hummus, fruit salad with 4 portions of fruit and a biscuit. I don't think school dinners are more nutritious and struggle to believe that so many people are sending their children to school with such crap packed lunches that fish, chips, chocolate cake and custard is nutritionally better.

Aibu to find this statistic difficult to believe?

Nutritious isn't the word I'd use to describe school dinners. They are disgusting.

Are they looking at it as part of the wider diet the child has? Hard to judge on one meal surely?

School dinners are on average nutritionally balanced (according to the meal factory I visited as part of a school thing a while back), but the 'average' depends on the child eating a bit of everything they offer that week, not existing on potato faces followed by sponge pudding because they hate carrots and the previous 200 children ate all the fruit.

I rather think it also depended on averaging out across veggie and meat meals but might have remembered that wrong.

So I reckon you have a better chance of balance for one child by giving them a mix of protein, veg and fruit they will actually get to eat.

Is it just clever wording being manipulated? A home made lunch that could be more nutritious than a school one, isn't as nutritious as the school one because it's more nutritious. But that lunch would be lumped into the 99% that aren't as nutritious.

Bollocks!
School dinners yesterday was cheese pizza and potato wedges followed by 'sugar chocolate brownie', which had extra sugar sprinkled on the top according to DS.

They are awful, especially the veggie option. DS has them very occasionally!

I dont know when mine had packed lunches they took what I would think of as healthy food. One day my ds accidently swapped boxes (they had the same box) with another boy and when he brought it home it had been full of a sausage roll, crips a bag of haribo and some sort of fruit roll up thing. My dd also came home in tears one day because everyone had made fun of her for liking celery after she had some in her lunch box.

I have no idea what the rest of the class took obviously they may have had salad for all I know!

They'd have to up their game considerably before they could make that claim at our village school! I have regularly seen them serve pizza, chips and spaghetti hoops as a balanced meal and there's always cake or pudding as a dessert. The veg is served but rarely eaten.

There are some healthier options but the children have to choose them and pizza, curry, nuggets, etc will always be more popular.

I know lots of parents send crisps, chocolate bars and yoghurts every day as a matter of course but I cannot be in that much of a minority in not doing so.

Not at our school

Our school dinners are horrible.

I used to help out a lot at school, I've seen what they dish up, I've even eaten it once

They regularly run out before all children have been fed and there's always a few at the back of the queue who get the half a jacket spud/some chips/shrivelled up cubes of carrot/slice of bread combo

I also fail to see how pizza with jacket potato and spaghetti hoops, followed by chocolate crispy cake (today's menu) is really any better than a cheese sarnie, some cucumber, grapes and strawberries and a couple of Jammie Dodgers (DD's lunch today)

When I worked in a school, these are examples of some of the packed lunches the kids brought in:

1. a sandwich box containing boiled white rice, and nothing else. At all.
2. an apple, and nothing else (because 'Mummy didn't go shopping')
3. half a packed of choc digestives. And nothing else.

So, yes, for some children, school dinners ARE more nutritious than packed lunches. Not every mum is a MN mum.

Yeah right. They picked the best school meals and the worst packed lunches for that one didn't they.

Talk about having an agenda don't believe it for a second.

Schol dinners are only as nutritious as they say if the damn things actually eaten and resembles the sample given for the analysis. Which is unlikely let's face it. Soggy veg bland food most ends up in bin and kids fill up on chips/potatoes, cake and te bread.

I have worked in a lunch hall. The dinners are bland and dull. But I think most people would be shocked at what is in most lunch boxes most of the time - even from parents you would think would know better.

I find it difficult to believe school dinners can be classed as edible nevermind nutritious. my biggest problem with it is the shit they buy in and have no idea where it comes from or even what it is. I work in agriculture so I know the legislation for my own country (and its a lot tighter than eu legislation for the record) and I don't even eat supermarket meat, I only go to the butcher that is supplied by our farm and I use a greengrocer supplied by a local producer and my milk is delivered from the dairy. I am really really passionate about it but they keep wanting to push this processed shit on my kids .

I should think 99% of school dinners are better than what I send in. Even my fruit freak child doesn't want any F or Veg in his lunchbox.

BUT, big BUT, that's only if the kids at school eat a balance of what's on the plate. I worked as MSA. Plenty of kids will not touch the veg no matter how much you chivvy or threaten or restrict. I end up allowing pudding if the stubborn ones will simply try the veg. Some will push the food around plate becoming inedible sludge until the lunch hour is nearly up & we let them just scoff the cake & milk-drink because you want them to have SOMETHING before going back. The older ones we can't monitor closely at all so plenty can go in the bin we didn't notice and they may only have eaten 2 bites of bread roll & all the pudding.

So yeah, as a total meal I can easily believe most hot dins are much better,but it's not what the kids actually ate. I'm ok about what DC eat in their packups; plenty of junk they aren't allowed.

I would regard a cheese sarnie, some cucumber, grapes and strawberries and a couple of Jammie Dodgers as a dream lunch, to be honest, now I have worked in a lunch hall.

I thinks that is utter crap tbh. Dd has wholemeal bread sandwich with cheese or chicken on it, a mixed salad or cucumber, celery and carrot and two pieces of fruit with a small piece of cake or biscuit. I don't believe for a second that she'd get four/five portions of raw fruit and veg in one meal when eating a school dinner.

That's got to be fairly rare though surely windchime? Most of dcs friends have the simple sandwich, crisps, fruit, biscuit which isn't great but is still better than school dinners IMO. Dcs school sound as though they may stop packed lunches altogether because of lack of space - can they actually do that?

Think mine are fairly ok, probably better then most school dinners. Some of the stuff I've seen in some of my kids classmates pack lunches surprise me though.

67% of all statistics are made up.

:o

Gogoflo- it is much less rare than you would think.

Nickifury - that is what I would give my children. They refuse to have packed lunch though as "no-one else has vegetables and fruit so it would be too embarrassing". They willingly eat vegetables and fruit anywhere else though!

Lunches I saw when working were mostly white bread sandwiches, usually with jam or ham, often barely eaten. Chocolate bar. Crisps. Maybe a yoghurt. Maybe a fruit smoothie. VERY rarely some fruit, even more rare for vegetables. I worked in a affluent area.

There was the odd handful of children with soup sometimes. I honestly don't think I ever saw brown bread. Definitely some who always brought plain rice or a cold sausage roll.

I tried a school dinner once and while not particularly unhealthy it was utterly tasteless. I wanted to smother it in soya sauce and shichimi pepper to make it taste of something!

I have to say, I do hate all this judginess over other peoples kids packed lunches.

My DS is a terribly fussy eater and is a real mare to do a packed lunch for. I always make sure he has at least 2 bits of fruit in his lunch and every day he brings it home with the fruit still in there.

He is at secondary now so no idea what sort of meals the canteen are dishing up - he tends to have hot dinners on fridays when they do dish up say sausage and chips but thats a once a week thing.

I just want him to eat.....and I couldn't really care less what others are eating.

I do get what you're saying Betty but if we're invited to compare the nutrition of one over the other, that is pretty much an exercise in judgement!

Guilty. DS brings a cold ssg roll. used to have daily ham sandwiches like siblings. I insist on WM bread. @ the primary they are supposed to eat sandwiches before any pudding but had to arm twist with some of them. Nobody monitors what they bring or share at secondary, of course.

True..........:)