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?

Never understand the fear that sponge pudding creates on mumsnet.

There's no fear of the idea of cake

The problems lies with a) - frequency
b)- wtf is in it as it's got no sugar. (Chemicals? Additives?)
c) it's used to bulk out the meal provide calories and fill kids up rather than giving better portions of the main. It's basically a cheap filler.

I think leaving Mumsnetters packed lunches out of the equation is a white bread ham/jam sandwich and a packet of crisps which is what a lot of teachers have seen as being common more or less nutritious than potato smilies and chicken nuggets?

Jumping to the end (missed all but first page), me and my siblings all had jam or cheese sandwiches, a packet of crisp, chocolate biscuit (penguin, club etc) and a yoghurt (started healthy descended into muller rice or crunch corners). School dinners would def have been the healthier option for us. I think MN is either a bit of a parallel universe with everyone eating super healthy or people exaggerate how much their children love celery and hummus.

DS isn't at school yet but he has hot meals at nursery and eats what he's given so I'll prob continue it at primary too. Lunch here could be crackers, fruit, cheese etc or a sausage roll and chocolate, I'm not a very over concerned mum with such things. Everything in moderation.

From what I've seen of school dinners (I'm a midday assistant) they are reasonably balanced and healthy if you eat a bit of everything.

My DD2, however, would never eat a single piece of fruit or vegetable if she had them as she will only eat raw carrots, apples and bananas (and not the cooked veg and slightly browning pieces of sliced apple on offer at school). I consider her sandwich, piece of fruit, yoghurt and water gives better nutritional value as I can give her things she will actually eat.

From what I've seen of the packed lunches kids bring in, some are awful, but many are much the same as mine. Nowhere near 99% are awful, and the school catchment area is very mixed.

I agree with a lot of PPs, the menu and the reality are very different!
DS1 is a brilliant eater and actually complained of the lack of fruit / veg in dinners and also the fact that the portions were too small by upper school (they are the same right through for 4-12 year olds). He is however going to try school dinners next year when he moves up to secondary as these seem to be better - for example a meal deal of soup, sandwich and a piece of home baking. The sorts of packed lunches I usually provide are along the lines of sandwich/roll/pitta/wrap, fruit, crisps, drink. No they're not perfect but combined with the healthy foods they eat at home I think we get a balance.
In response to the OP I think it should always be a parental choice and schools shouldn't try to bully families into taking a certain course and especially not with flawed research / statistics.
However if a child consistently has really inadequate lunch provision then that is a different story and the appropriate steps should be taken.

Oh god all this talk about healthy lunches is creating an urge in me to go and bake the unhealthiest thing I can think of and put that in the packed lunches. What's wrong with me!!??

Homemade rocky road?

Exactly Amanda. In fact Dan Lepard's rocky road rock cakes, involving an entire tin of condensed milk and more chocolate than you can shake a stick at. Just need to buy some marshmallow. It's my mission for the day.

Oh, honeycomb.

I've skipped a few pages from the middle of this thread, but wanted to reiterate what others have said about needing to define what a quality healthy lunch is.

Our school menu looks ok at first glance, but it's very light on protein (and completely devoid of any quality protein, the 'roast chicken' dinner is made with reconstituted chicken roll and, as DS put it, "the meat isn't like real meat") and due to being prepared off site the vegetables are all soggy and horrid after reheating.

Looking at the last menu they sent home, a typical week is chicken kiev (reconstituted and breaded) with sweetcorn and peas; sausages with omelette, potato waffles and baked beans; roast dinner with (reconstituted) meat and just two veg; chicken curry, with rice, naan and 2 veg; and, fish and chips. There is a pudding every day; chocolate sponge with choc sauce; pancakes and ice cream; flapjacks with, suspiciously titled 'milk drink'; apple crumble and custard which actually sounds lovely; and, rice crispie cake and 'milk drink'.

I'm sure that the nutritional value only takes #fruit/veg and total fat and calories into account, not the quality of the food and amount of surviving nutrients. There's also the problem of poor quality protein and the fact that they frequently run out of meat so some meals are protein-free. This last point is being addressed, I believe, so should be sorted for next term.

Both my DC will qualify for free meals next term and, fortunately, we will be allowed to pick and choose. My youngest is a picky eater and I suspect she'll do better on hot lunches, as she doesn't eat sandwiches and a hot lunch will be better than cold pasta, chicken, banana and grapes every day which is the only cold lunch option she'll reliably eat. I suspect she'll just pick and choose what she fancies from the hot lunch, but is much better with hot food than cold (will eat veggies etc) so will probably do ok. DS is a very good eater and will probably stick to packed lunches most days as I know he'll get a better variety of better quality food that way.

I always wonder about this - but then I'm shocked by what some parents put in when I do see them.

Mine have had school dinners this year - but I suspect DD2 hasn't eaten much veg so may have been better of with packed lunches. Big pay off is that overall she is less fussy generally and older two hardly at all now.

Is no one concerned that actually it could end up adding to child and adult obesity?

Whilst I think the option is a good idea and will benefit a lot of kids who don't get a good meal at home, its enforcing as compulsory that I have objections to. I really don't think that giving universal free school meals IS going to benefit us as a society.

The question is really this: if your kids had a hot dinner at school, would you then serve another hot dinner at home? And what are the implications of this? I couldn't eat two hot dinners a day like this without putting on weight.

• If you choose not to give your kids a second hot meal, would you then end up with a situation where you have to make two different meals for yourself and your kids?

• What nutritional effects will this have on parents? Would they end up snacking and eating more shit during the course of a day, because they eat on the run at work, and then come home and have less of an incentive to cook and eat a good family meal for themselves as well as their kids?

• Would this mean you just essentially give them the packed lunch they would have had at school anyway? Perhaps this means they will end up getting less benefit overall, because you would have cooked better meals at home than the school can provide?

• Would you end up giving your kids too much by continuing to feed them two large meals a day?

• Would this mean that kids would see less cooking of meals at home and therefore not benefit from the experience of this?

• Not to mention there has been a lot of evidence to suggest that sitting down and eating a meal as a family has social as well as nutritional value. Are we going to loose this even more than we have already lost?

• By taking cooking out of the home, are we really improving things for kids in the long run?

• Are they going to be even LESS likely to be able to cook for themselves in adulthood and be more dependant on ready meals?

I'm sorry, but I do not understand why you should just look at the contents of a lunch box and judge them as bad, so therefore they should be just be stopped by a nanning state.

There are wider social implications here.

This is not France - or anywhere else in Europe - where eating habits are very different to here. Our culture is one of eating crap and thats reflected in whats in the supermarkets. You have to change the OVERALL culture and attitude to food, not focus on one little element of it. I think the posts saying that 'packed lunches are a PITA' or 'the kids get school dinners because I'm too lazy to make lunches' are indicative of this culture.

Ultimately, what are we really trying to achieve here? Shouldn't the focus be on the long term improvement of our entire society's health not just the years a child is at school?

OP (and others with your hummus pepper and celery filled delights), you are simply the 1%.

The other 99% lunchboxes contain something like sliced bread sarnie (cheese or ham), apple, juice box, crisps or maybe a frube or biscuit. If lucky.

In most cases school dinners are probably more nutritious overall because of the variety over the course of a week.

Is hot dinner necessarily more unhealthy?

I grew up having at least 2 hot meals a day, 3 if you can get it. And I'm a healthy weight. (Underweight until I have children. )

I agree. I think a jacket potato is no worse and probably better than white bread.

At the school my kids go to they have one veg only per meal. Often cooked to buggery, offering no nutritional value whatsoever. They are also hugely carb intense. Packed lunches all the way in this house. (Except Fridays, when they are allowed schools fish, chips and peas for an end of week treat.)

Having said that there are one or two kids whose lunch boxes consist of white bread sandwich, crisps, cake, and squash cartons...

RED Would this mean you just essentially give them the packed lunch they would have had at school anyway? Perhaps this means they will end up getting less benefit overall, because you would have cooked better meals at home than the school can provide?

I think this is sometimes true of us, though again we can manage more variety at home with nice things on toast and simple pasta suppers. Our kids' school has Really Really Good school dinners though (I know because I have tried them)

The thing about taking cooking out of the home is interesting. It all goes back to cost of living/housing/needing everyone to be working all the hours god sends.

Good post RedToothBrush

I think the hot lunch/school dinner is supposed to just replace the packed lunch, with a normal cooked supper later in the day. That's where the "more nutritious" claim comes from anyway. However, I know at our primary that lots of parents use hot lunches on days where they have after school activities, and then just serve a quick supper of cheese and beans on toast, or similar (no criticism of this, btw, I have done it too).

I really think they need to do away with the heavy puddings and replace them with a more calorie-dense main meal followed by fruit or yoghurt. I believe, like others, that the heavy puddings hide the problem of children picking at the main course, as they just fill up on chocolate cake afterwards. They also need to address the quality of the food. Less processed foods, more quality meat/protein and fresh veg/salad.

I think it has the potential to be a good idea. Unfortunately, I believe, the money will be creamed off by the big suppliers and only poor, substandard food will make it into most of our lunch halls.

what is wrong with "white bread"? Fortified with calcium for making strong bones etc....

most brown bread has no advantage and is made with "enriched" flour i.e. white bread flour with colouring (usually caramel) added.

Only Whole-grain, whole-wheat bread - where the first ingredient listed is wholemeal flour contains a nutritional difference in how it is absorbed.

Unfortunately my DD can't absorb enough nutrients if she has a lot of fibre in her diet - so we would be told off by the lunch police for giving white bread and by the gastroenterologist for giving wholegrain...

can't win.

White bread/wrap + cucumber and soft fruit followed by a bit of cheese or occasional (as in once a week) home-made cake/biscuit with water to drink are what were recommended by the hospital for her school packed lunch. Sounds healthy to me.

Referring to your headline as I haven't RTFT, I think it's bollocks too.

Pizza, spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce, chips, water and stodgy pudding

vs

hummus sandwich on wholemeal, strips of pepper and carrot, kiwi fruit, small handful mixed raisins and dried apricots and pumpkin seeds, water

One of those options is a genuine school meal eaten by DS fifteen years ago (I never believed him as what he was reporting bore little relation to the published menu, and sounded appallingly high in carbs and low in fruit n veg) vs standard packed lunch for DD3 now.

My (muslim) friend had her children have school lunches for years back in the days when we didn't know the turkey "twizzlers" were actually largely (up to 40%) pig. That's a lot of forgiveness to ask Allah for...

Even DD3's (vegetarian, locally sourced) school lunches are not as nutritious as the packed ones I make for her.

I've read this thread with interest and I'm amazed that so many schools don't have the policies we have. My DSD is 8, and her school has a "no junk" policy for packed lunches, with parents/guardians being contacted if the child's lunch isn't appropriately nutritious. They also have an annoying, but also clever "no rubbish" policy, which means any leftovers from packed lunches (empty packets or uneaten food) can't be thrown away at the school - the children have to take it home with them. It's dressed up as a "Less Waste" campaign for the kids, but it's clearly so they eat what they're given and don't get into trouble when they bring home their carrot sticks.

The only rule I find ridiculous is that no children are allowed to take nut products in as part of their lunch due to ONE child having an allergy in the school, and they're afraid they might share. Surely it's easier to teach one child not to take food from other children than to eliminate a potentially nutritious snack from 300 other children.

Luckily DSD is a great eater, actually better than me and if we forget (or have run out of) to put in that third or fourth piece of fruit she nags us about it!

My OH only lets her have school meals on "special occasion" days, like Easter or the Christmas meal, and she sees that as a treat. He also chooses not to give her school meals regularly as he feels very strongly about us all sitting down to a hot evening meal together at the end of the day, and doesn't want her having two hot meals a day, and then coming to expect that in school holidays.

(Aside: I have lived in this country for many years now and still can't get over this "cooked meal" business. Where I come from every meal is a hot meal, and all the snacks too, if you can get it . And I still do it as much as I can... Can't connect this with heathy/unhealthy.)