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?

We lived in the States for a little bit (till they kicked us out ) and I was amazed at the peanut butter and jelly option any day when lunch didn't appeal coming from a total ban school. Otherwise all I remember is that every event at school was always celebrated with food (huge grandparent's day breakfast, sweets for good performance etc). It was a really good school, very welcoming.

No neon milk. Chocolate once a week. Sometimes the meat is fresh but sometimes it's chicken nuggets or fish sticks. No meat on Fridays during Lent. Potatoes are not a vegetable. :)

But it was always like this here...the US has national guidelines but states can interpret them how they want. I've never seen a school lunch like on the JO program but I think they're fairly common down south.

Glad it's not like that everywhere.

It was actually heart breaking seeing already chubby children eating breakfast pizza and drinking that milk.

And that awful woman couldn't see a problem. And the fact the kids had no idea what vegetables were showed just how bad it really was.

I tried to share the menu but couldn't. :( There is pizza and chicken nuggets every so often but there is also fresh broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, green salads, steamed veggies, and fresh fruit. And no "white" bread products (pasta, rice, etc) are allowed. I'm not completely thrilled with it but it could be worse.

Yes Nooka , clearing your plate
And when that was a plate of tapioca, or rice pudding that had been scorched at the bottom of the pan and so tasted of coal

DD's current school serves compulsory school dinners. On the face of it, the options are good and relatively healthy. In reality, the popular choices go immediately and DD's class (they drew the short straw this time last year and are still last to go in) end up with whatever's left.

This tends to be the curry (the school has a high Asian population, they have decided this means veg curry is served daily, DD cannot cope with spice or heat in her food) that no-one else wanted, and dried out, burnt at the edges pasta, tiny shrivelled baked potatoes, dried up baked beans and curling plastic cheese (these are the alternative options if they don't want either main choice). Veg seems to be sweetcorn or that frozen 'mixed veg' every day, both of which DD hates. She loves green leafy veg, but they have that on once a week at most. The 'salad' option tends to be cucumber slices. Pudding is cake or cheese and crackers but the cake goes in 5 seconds flat and the cheese gets pinched to go on potatoes/pasta.

So she will come home starving having eaten a bit of cucumber, some bread and marge and a spoonful of pasta and cheese with dry crackers for pudding and upset because she will have been yelled at for not eating curry/sweetcorn. Friday is the only day I know she'll have eaten a full dinner because there's no choice - it's fish fingers, chips and peas, with ice cream for afters. So not exactly nutritionally brilliant.

I'm not the only parent who has complained but we are continually fobbed off. Private schools are not all that they are made out to be!

She's changing school in September to one which is packed lunches only. Neither of us can wait - I can guarantee that she will be nutritionally better off than in her present school!

Ours are fine, normal sort of main meal options but lots of veg and a salad bar.

They're just allowed to run out of food there?!

Lovecat neon milk is "strawberry" milk...bright pink and full of sugar.

Just asked and yesterday she had
Jacket potato and tuna, peas, and melon.

Oh yes. Apparently this is okay because there's always curry left over and 'everyone likes curry' (

Lovecat that is awful. Apart from how your poor daughter must feel, how on earth are a school with that sort of poor policy cope with children with allergies / intolerances? Or do they just have to sit conspicuously in the corner with a lunchbox on their own like a little Billy-no-mates?

My daughter was in primary when JO did his thing. I remember the letter home from the council "not a turkey twizzler in sight" literally those words. They served chicken nuggets twice a week. The irony appeared to escape them.
Meanwhile I sent DD in with a sandwich, raw carrot, raw green beans (odd, I know, but she chose these and hoovered them up), a cheese string, yoghurt, and drink.

Lovecat can your child opt for a packed lunch? Our school used to make them up for the week's lunchtime activity kids who struggled to get in to the food hall in time for a full meal. At registration in the morning you'd say if you were doing French Film Club or whatever and the kitchen would get your name and write it on the paper lunch bag for you to collect. It may be worth suggesting as an option (although I see you are moving her anyway). Our packed lunch wasn't great and was usually grated cheese, apple, penguin bar, crisps and carton of juice. However better than being starving or force fed curry

I should add a few of us used to pretend we were doing Maths Club purely to avoid a particular food day. We even had a salad bar for further choice, but I think the pull of the penguin bar and more free time at lunch had more appeal

lovecat

I'm
and :( for your poor dd.

That's not even on the same planet as acceptable. What a shitty way to treat children and way to give them issues with food.

my DS's packed lunch is:
sandwich with 50:50 bread containing butter and soft cheese or marmite.
around 10 large strawberries.
carrot sticks, cucumber sticks
a piece of home baking.
On Friday he gets crisps too if he wants.
He wont eat school lunch
He has been bullied re the contents of his lunchbox

The school lunch is disgusting.
It is cooked miles away.
Sometimes arrives in staff cars (ie not refrigerated)
Tiny portions of 'plastic' food. Year 1 and Year 7 dished up same amount.
Plastic sausage and chips. Carbs + carbs (ie pasta and chips)
chips chips chips chips and chips
Pudding is often: 'custard cream biscuits'
Never any fruit left

£2.00 a day.

I was a visitor at another school recently.

Food cooked from scratch in school kitchen.
Chicken casserole (with lots of extra veg)
Fruit crumble and custard (I tried both and they were very good)
Beef cobbler, fish on a Friday, Spaghetti with ragu,
Roast chicken and full trimmings every Thursday
Each fortnight they have: 'Chinese food day' or 'Indian food day' or 'Jacket Potato Bonanza day' (where the kids who want can help mix the 10 fillings on offer ).

£2.50 a day. FAR more than '50p' diff in quality and quantity of ingredients though.

It CAN be done, clearly.

This is a state school too.
Forgot to mention the Salad Bar which was extensive.

Am blown away

School dinners are still crap.

Our school dinners used to be OK until the council changed suppliers.

It used to be one main meal with a veggie option and a pudding or fruit, so stuff like shepherds pie with veg and Apple crumble and custard, or sausages with veg, mash and gravy and jelly. All fresh ingredients and cooked from scratch for £1.30

Then a couple of years ago it all went to shit. Quality and quantity went down and the price went right up.

Now we get 'main' stuff, then a whole load of 'side' choices such as pasta, jacket spuds, bread rolls and then veg choices, which is usually horrible frozen carrots and tinned sweetcorn. I'm not bothered about frozen or tinned veg, we use it sometimes, but god knows what they do to it as it's bloody horrible by the time it's served up. For £2.50

There's also never enough of the 'main' choices to go round, so the children that go in last end up with random combinations of what's left.

Millions of complaints later, they "solved" the issue of there not being enough. Not by increasing the quantities, but by rotating the order in which the classes go in for lunch so it's not always the same class getting the dregs

There was roast chicken on the menu the other day, DD loves a roast and we were busy that evening so I gave her school dinners so I could fling beans on toast at her in the evening. Paid my £2.50, only to discover when she got home that it was her class's day for going in last so she got some roast potatoes, a bread roll, some of the cubes of shrivelled up soggy carrots, and some plain pasta. None of the puddings left, so she didn't get one.

On paper the dinners look fab, but what's actually dished up is crap.

wondering if you can get them under the trades descriptions act? after all it is not what is advertised is it?

What BeCool said!

I know there are far too many children whose parents don't provide a balanced diet or even enough food, so free school meals are essential. But why extend to everyone in KS1? Why not give those on dinners free breakfast as well, if there's budget to be spent?

I don't understand why school meals are so often crappy.

It is enough budget to cook something decent.

I go somewhere where we are mass catered, about 300 of us at a time, a mixture of adults and children. I've helped with the catering sometimes. I know the daily food budget is £2.50 but that covers breakfast and dinner, so say £1.90 for dinner.The food is cooked on site by one cook. (who does have help with serving.)

There's always 2 courses, main and pud.
There's always a massive bowl of salad for everyone to help themselves to.
Pud is usually big tray bake cakes (like apple cake) with custard, or a piece of fruit, or a yoghurt.
For the main course, there are meaty, veggie and vegan options for the main part of it, then everyone gets the same veggies - always 2 or 3 types, yes often tinned or frozen, but what do you expect. Unlimited wholemeal bread. Typical meaty meals are chicken curry and rice, pork stroganoff with jacket potato, fish pie, lamb stew with new potatoes, paella. Kids eat the same just smaller portions. No chicken nuggets, no highly processed food, just normal family dinner stuff.

It isn't rocket science. Just someone who actually knows how to cook and scale it up to cater for large numbers, and buying in normal ingredients, and actually, you know, cooking. Why can't schools do this?

I remember being quite taken aback when ds1s teacher once commented on how exciting and healthy ds1s packed lunch always seem to be.
I have nothing different than what the majority on mn seem to have. Usually sandwich/wrap/sometimes pasta, some fruit, a piece of cake or a biscuit. Most mums I know do the same.
My friend recently started working at the school and she said she was shocked at what some children have. Things like one ready made pancake and nothing else, a pack of Belgian waffles and nothing else, Nutella sandwiches seem to be popular. Not only poor lunches but sent in filthy lunchboxes too.
Don't underestimate how many kids have rubbish packed lunches.

Therefore 99% are more or less nutritious, whatever that means in real terms?

I would like to see this re tested tbh.

Re tested in the realistic way. Ergo they turn up unannounced and are on the 3rd sitting and get what those classes would get. Especially in schoos where catering is not done on premesis. I would like to see the stats on those meals.

Not the first in line, "best efforts cooks" at a small country school where everything's local!

And no cherry picking lunch boxes to prove their points!