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?

Yes agree about the cheese based veggie dishes! Once I asked what the veggie choice was to be told it was fish fingers - not a vegetable last time I checked!

Well that depends doesn't it.

A meal is only as healthy and balanced as the bits of it that get eaten.

DDs packed lunch today was a chicken salad sandwich, yoghurt, crisps, slice of watermelon and an apple. If she ate the whole lot it would have been OK. If, as sometimes happens she 'forgot' to eat the fruit and chucked half the sandwich away, it wouldn't have been so good. Sadly at 15 she is far more likely to eat the crap and leave the good stuff as she was at 6 when the 'healthy eating' mantra seemed to have sunk in.

Same for the hot lunches. DS2 went for an induction day at his secondary school yesterday. He had a chicken curry with rice. I don't know whether the rice was brown or how much veg was in teh curry but all in all I reckon it's probable on a par with a normal packed lunch. However I am aware that the pupils could choose to avoid the curry/pasta type meals and eat potato wedges and sausages every day.

IME you can take a child to a healthy diet but (short of standing over them and watching every mouthful) you can't make them eat it.

Very few home kitchens have been assessed by a proper hygiene inspector. Most families don't have seperate fridges for meat and dairy. The person who makes up the packed lunch does not have health and hygiene certificate.

Is food prepared in a non professional enviromnent less nutricious? I doult it.

Personally I think there should be less choice and pupils should have to pick one protein, one carb portion and some veg so it would be healthier.

A couple of weeks ago I read a newspaper article reporting on the findings of this Henry Dimbleby chap who seems to have been asked to look in to school dinners. His conclusion was that choice should be pretty much done away with for school dinners, at least at primary, because how can you expect a child as young as four to choose a balanced healthy lunch when they are offered options.

I am not even sure that the one carb, one protein, one veg thing would work unless the dinner ladies show a bit more common sense than the ones at DDs primary. There they had a similar rule but it was one from "the main things", one from potato/pasta/rice and a veg. DD told me that even when a jacket potato was in the selection of main things the dinner ladies still insisted she had pasta with it!!

On another occasion when she was only about 5 I asked her what veg she had had and she said stuffing. Apparently they were having chicken and the tray of stuffing had been put with the veg and was allowed as a vegetable choice.

When I was at primary there was no choice whatsoever. Typically we had meat, potatoes and a vegetable followed by a pudding. Everyone was expected to eat their dinner without a fuss and, by and large, that is what happened. Seems like a good scheme.

It wasn't a good scheme at my school. It was always mash, watered down mince, custard where they used to add pans of hot water to. We were forced to it and it was inedible. My mum successfully campaigned to allow pupils to take packed lunches to school. This was in the 70's.

5foot5 I quite agree, the children need a lot more guidance. Obv this is harder the older they get.
What really drives me mad is how much of the food at school is portable so the students wonder around eating, there isn't enough room in our school for them all to sit down. This def makes it harder to eat a proper cooked meal, many of them just have a baguette or panini.
A lot of investment needed if school meals are to improve!

Government nutritional standards for school meals:

There must be:

high-quality meat, poultry or oily fish
at least 2 portions of fruit and vegetables with every meal
bread, other cereals and potatoes

There can’t be:

fizzy drinks, crisps, chocolate or sweets in school meals and vending machines
more than 2 portions of deep-fried food a week

Apparently 99% of packed lunches do not achieve these standards

pointless - agree about mobile eating! The school my DD goes to (and DS2 will in September) have a smallish general purpose area behnd reception which contains chairs and tables at lunch time. There is just about enough room depending on how many people choose to have a cooked lunch that day. There is a lovely patio area outside with a lovely view of open fields - but no tables and no shelter!! So an awful lot of kids have to eat standing up or propped against walls. And this is a new school - very pretty, very light and airy ...but not terrible practical.

Looks good on paper doesn't it.

But when 2 portions of veg can mean spaghetti hoops and sweet corn - then not so much

Potatoes- so smiles, chips, powdered/pellet mash

Bread- basically what the kids fill up on. Cheap white carbs

No more than two fried products a week- so still breaded reformed chicken and fish fingers just ovened instead.

Fish is nearly always battered

Not really that great.

I think this is the research they are quoting:

A cross-sectional survey of children's packed lunches in the UK: food- and nutrient-based results.

C E L Evans, D C Greenwood, J D Thomas, J E Cade

Standards for school meals were recently introduced in the UK; however, no such standards exist for packed lunches. This study measures the provision and consumption of a range of food types and nutrients in British children's packed lunches and compares the results with the prevailing school meal standards in England.
Cross-sectional survey data was collected from 1294 children, age 8-9 years, attending 89 British primary schools. Eighty-seven primary schools declined to take part. The outcomes were the weight of food types and nutrients, provided and consumed in packed lunches and the proportion meeting the government food and nutrient school meal standards for England.
Fourteen out of 1294 (1.1%) of packed lunches met all the food-based standards for school meals in England.

Pointlessfan I guess it is harder when there are more pupils than places. I think I was lucky because at our very small village school there was enough room for everyone to sit down together at the same time. Mind you this was in the classroom - we didn't have a special dining room. We had to set the tables properly with tablecloths, cutlery properly laid out, water jugs and glasses (I kid not!). Then we all ate together and din't leave the table until everyone had finished.

As an introduction to table manners and social dining skills it was very good. When you read statistics about some families never eating together and not even owning a dining table then it seems a shame that their children don't get this exposure to dining at school anymore.

And where is the vegetarian protein sauce that isn't cheese or a quorn sausage?

Where?

Bollocks!

Typical packed lunch for children and me...

Falafel (4) with salad (lettuce leaves and herb leaves, carrot, cucumber, radish, spring onion and tomatoes) hummus.

Watermelon and strawberries (or similar).

Sometimes we have sandwiches on wholemeal bread with tuna, cheese or leftover cold meat, but we still have all the salady stuff too.

I've seen school dinners at my school; my lunches are far healthier.

How are spag hoops a vegetable???!!!
There are always vegetables available at school. Sadly it mainly seems to be the teachers who eat them.

Dd's school meals are excellent, they are all cooked on the premises and are 'meals' not bits of this and that. There is limited choice of a main or a vegetarian meal or a jacket potatoe or a salad. They have a four week rolling menu which is changed each term, dd loves most of the meals and raves about a few of them and always has seconds. I'm happy with the standard. From the sounds of it though school meals is as variable as education standards itself, I wonder if there is a correlation?

Just how it should be, 5foot and I would support this, even staff eating with kids. However, I expect the unions would have something to say about that!!!

Seriously, at many schools if you have read any of the other school dinner threads, spaghetti hoops and baked beans are used to fulfil part of the vegetable quota.

As is the salad bar whether it's touched or not.

Every day the same thing too.

Yup, that's my kids, too. They get irate if I try to vary it. And what's worse, don't eat anything.

Plus when you think about it, school meals are done as if that's the only meal that the kid is having.

A packed lunch may well be dependant on what you had planned for breakfast and/or dinner.

So a small amount of protein when they had scrambled egg for breakfast and they are having a roast dinner at home it's no big deal.

Similarly a lack of fat, may reflect the fact that they are going him to chicken and vegetable pie followed by home made fudge cake.

What I mean is, on it's own it may not meet standards but combined with what's planned for the rest of the day it's plenty

Exactly, Giles, as a parent I know what the DCs will have for breakfast and for dinner. Therefore their packed lunch sits in that.

I honestly can't believe so many people are along for all this!

We are being trained like puppies with choc drops and they are lapping it up.

This will all be hiding some sinister plot to take money away somewhere else.

The supply/withholding of food and fuel and water is how corrupt governments control their people isn't it?