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?

DS currently has a packed lunch - it isn't perfect but fine imo, eg. cheese sandwich (white bread!), a piece of fruit and some crisps or mini cheddars.

I doubt it is much better or worse than the school dinners, which for example every Friday are fish fingers, chips and beans followed by chocolate sponge and chocolate sauce.

Giles I think packed lunches are a PITA. I make them for my dcs as they have them at the childminder. And I do my best to make them nutritious.
So yes, I hope my kids like school meals. But they won't be having them if I'm not happy with the quality/ balance. Which is why I said I hope they're ok because I most certain,y would not prefer they eat crap than I have to make lunches. I work very hard out of the home and I work hard at home.
I like to cook nice food for them but packed lunches are a bloody faff.
I love my kids and I accept that I have to do the occasional thing that is a pita.

From somewhere on these boards I read that you should have 5 things in the packed lunch - a carb-type thing, a protein-type thing, a portion of veg, a portion of fruit, a drink, and a small treat. (Oh hang on, that's 6 .) We've stuck to that for 5 years now and usually everything gets eaten - unless they are crafty and chucked the veg/fruits? Do they let them do that? But my little darlings wouldn't lie to me, would they?

We like making packed lunches.

And I am also really hoping DS will eat/likes the free school dinners as making a packed lunch is a pain!

I notice that quite a few posters have said that their kids are fussy eaters so wouldn't eat a school dinner but I would say it would be worth a trial as peer pressure might have a positive effect and encourage them to try new things. My kids really like the sweet potato and lentil curry and the Spanish chicken with chorizo. Although I know they are generally good eaters, I am still surprised sometimes at their meal choice.

Waswondering - that is terrible. I am beginning to realise just how lucky we are - no potato smiles on our school menu!

I've found school dinners perfectly edible in 10 years of teaching in umpteen schools. If I take my own packed lunch, its a cheese and pickle cob, bag of crisps and something sweet. I then want to snack later. I try taking fruit in, but don't get round to eating it as it's messy and lunchtime is short. My school lunches of lasange & garlic bread, roast dinner with two veg, and fish, chips and beans, with a small cake are more balanced and keep the munchies away until dinner time.

The only schools with a nutritionally poor choice were pre-Jamie Oliver standards.
I'm perfectly happy for my DCs to have school dinners when the time comes. Michellin stars, it's not, but there is a decent baseline of nutrition there.

SAdly I suspect they will be shit.

The only schools with a nutritionally poor choice were pre-Jamie Oliver standards

Not in our village.

I can well understand why you'd find a plate of lasagne and garlic bread more filling than one cheese and pickle cob and some crisps. Why don't you take two?

A cake that's sugar and fat free? WTAF is it made of

Good food costs. The catering/facilities management companies that get the contracts need to make a profit. So obviously a lot of the food is pretty poor. I would never eat the food offered at my dd's school so I don't force her to have it.

I have finally given in to my DDs and they will be having school dinners come September - They have been pestering me for them for ages! The school seems to do them pretty well, they follow the menu set by the county council, which to me looks balanced but boring.

I am however very lucky that both DDs eat pretty much anything, so will hopefully get a balanced meal.

My packed lunches are ok I think, good carbs (try to avoid white bread), cold meat or other protein, a couple of veg or salad and a bit of fruit. They have the occasional treat in there too.

I have been worried for ages that I have been somehow getting lunchboxes wrong having read the statistics, but have been daft enough to believe them! Why it didn't occur to me before that they would of course skew the numbers...

I work in a school and the school dinners offered are probably nutritionally okay if the child eats all of it, (which admittedly few do) and there's always one or two portions of veg as well as protein and carbohydrate. Some days are better than others and meals include roast dinner, pasta, vegetable curry, broccoli bake, pizza, fish fingers and chips, sausage and mash. I order a school dinner for myself from time to time and they are perfectly edible There is always a pudding which is usually quite a large cake, biscuit, flapjack or similar. Sometimes it's yoghurt or ice cream. Fruit is always an option but only a handful of children choose it.

Packed lunches tend to be pretty bad here - a white bread chocolate spread sandwich, yoghurt, crisps and cake is pretty normal. Often there's not even a piece of fruit. Of course there are some exceptions and some children do have very healthy and well balanced packed lunches but that is the exception in my school.

However I wonder how many of the children who are having a cooked school lunch go home and have a similar 'packed lunch' style evening meal anyway? When I was at school on the few occasions I'd have a cooked school lunch I would just have sandwiches (and crisps,a yoghurt etc) for my dinner. I wasn't getting two cooked meals a day.

I expect that a lot of the children who move from having a packed lunch at school to having a cooked school lunch will probably just have what they would have previously had in their lunchbox for their evening meal at home. How many children will be having two cooked dinners a day?

Here in France...

School dinners, there are no choices of what to have (though a veggie-ish option available), usually a salad starter, a meat or fish based main and a simple dessert like compote or plain yoghurt with a sprinkle of sugar on top. Water to drink. Possibly cheese and bread too. I think they get chips once a m

Packed lunches are not permitted in any of the primary schools in our city. And in the secondaries, they are not allowed to eat them in the canteen.

Chester
My friends do exactly that ! They call school lunch days 'hot dinner' and therefore have a 'cold tea' .
I had forgotten that .
But it's all still irrelevant ! It's about choice .

Here in France...

School dinners, there are no choices of what to have (though a veggie-ish option available), usually a salad starter, a meat or fish based main and a simple dessert like compote or plain yoghurt with a sprinkle of sugar on top. Water to drink. Possibly cheese and bread too. I think they get chips once a month, similarly pizza and a fancy / less healthy pudding. Ds's primary has only just become self service this year - prior to that, all meals were served to children at their tables, everyone getting the same

Packed lunches are not permitted in any of the primary schools in our city. And in the secondaries, they are not allowed to eat them in the canteen.

Read most of the thread and it all seems a be de-ja-vu with the Jamie Oliver school dinners. Did he not get his passed or is this them being rolled out? He was looking in some depth into what was being consumed and chucked and getting kids opinions on the choice etc. Was that all in vein? I thought he had even cracked the cost aspect...

DD is to start Primary next year and when I visited they couldn't show me the normal set up as they were expanding to make room for the new dinner hall for the free meals set up. I got the idea it was a traffic light system or something. IMO the sooner kids learn the nutritional side to food through science and basic biology the better. I imagine other countries do this at school and at home from a much earlier age?

MrsMook and Gold - so they 'took it on board' and yet we still have puddings made of a non-sugar substitute and pizza (going from other posters menu choices this week) rolled out?

dd and ds get two portions of veg in their lunch, and one or two of fruit. (dd has fruit at breakfast, ds has little of no fruit) wholemeal bread.

no crisps, no biscuits.

the other children think they get fruit shoots everyday...they are the only bottles that do not leak and the children can open and close properly. in reality it is squash that is as dilute as gnats pee. (the squash does not cover the bottom of the bottle even... compromise between keeping the dentist happy and the dr happy.

there is no information on the menus about the type of bread served for dinners, nor the amount of salad or what is available. eg is it always lettuce cucumber and tomato? then there is ds who would choose the least healthy option available on the menu everyday.

dd would be fine choosing a healthy diet.

I agree with you OP.

My children get the same lunch as dh and I, except that they get a cartoon of juice where we'd have tea/coffee. So a sandwich (bread made in breadmaker), some veges (cucumber, carrots or peppers), a couple of biscuits and a piece of fruit. Their school doesn't offer lunch at all so we don't have any choice really (not in the UK).

I am sure that there are plenty of poor packed lunches, but 1% acceptable just seems unlikely, and I would really query the blanket 'eating school dinners is better for children'. For me and many of my contemporaries having to eat school dinners was the biggest downside of going to school. It was not great having no choice or being pretty much forced to clear your plate. The food was often quite disgusting, it certainly wasn't an introduction to lovely new choices. I have never and will never ever eat a spam fritter in all my life!

I know that 70s food isn't being reintroduced, but cheap compulsory food sounds awfully like what was dished up to us a few decades ago, and most institutional cooked food is really not very nice at all. I know some schools serve really good food, and that's fantastic but I suspect they might be in the 1% category.

It really depends here in the US. Sometimes the school lunches are quite good and sometimes not. Dessert is rare, though. And in the early grades there's no choice. And everyone has to have a fruit or a vegetable and are encouraged to take both.

When I do pack for DS he gets a sandwich (either peanut butter or turkey, always on brown bread), some fruit, veggies and dip. Sometimes a cookie. He buys milk at school.

cheerful

Is any of it still like the JO program?

Neon milk and potatoes counting as a vegetable?

Is the meat fresh?