To bring this up with the school?

[Cat2014]

ds has school dinners a couple of days a week. On those days it's his main hot meal because the evenings are v busy. He says that he is only allowed one vegetable, eg is carrots and broccoli are on offer and he says 'both please' he's told he can only have one or the other.. Shouldn't they be allowed unlimited veg at lunch time? I know it's not a massive deal but is it normal? He doesn't like a huge variety of veg so if he has the opportunity to have more than one kind I would want to snap it up!

And everyone gets the same. Sorted.

I know Stealth. 100 children. 50 portions of carrot, 50 of broccoli and mix them together. Little Roger will get his carrots after all...

Ah, someone's offered you an escape route, paul! Fairness = everyone gets exactly the same, whether they want it or not; and waste is fine as long as it's from children's plates, not from serving trays. Sorted.

I am glad someone is thinking of Roger.

No escape route needed multi but mixed veg stops the nonsense. Roger is fed and happy.

Well, clearly you aren't keen to address the issue of how you can offer every child the option of vegetable A or vegetable B without waste, and why adding half-and-half would require more of either...

I'm starting to get a bit annoyed with Roger, tbh. Who does he think he is?

Isn't having only one vegetable with a meal pretty shit?

There wouldn't be as much waste as they're only having half a portion each though. Completely unhealthy and still wasteful though. To be fair, school catering ideas of a 'portion' are rubbish anyway. Most school dinners must only just scrape through legal requirements and the OP would be far better off sending in a packed lunch

And you're clearly gunning for an argument, hence me just stopping, or it will go on all day.

I don't understand why you could be considered to be BU...clearly I am also U!

It's just the argument that if they had half a portion of both types it would mess up the system, and/or mean they ran out of one type that makes no sense to me...what if every child had the carrots or every child had the broccoli under the current system? That would have the same effect. Surely that argument only works if they know exactly how many will have each veg type, so they cook exactly the right type of each?

I think you are being reasonable - I would possibly discuss this with school...phrased as a suggestion TBH. Alternatively I'd shake my head in wonder at the fact that, with at the absolutely justified emphasis on healthy eating at the moment, they'd not let a child who wanted to eat, for example, a green and an orange vegetable (therefore a healthy mix) do so.

bonkers.

Also, I am so clearly trying to avoid doing proper work. Can't quite believe I've got myself in involved in this discussion :-)

Also, I am so clearly trying to avoid doing proper work. Can't quite believe I've got myself in involved in this discussion

Same here!

Yes. That is definitely why you are 'stopping it', paul.

teeththief that's true. The outcome, though, is the kids who 'only like' vegetable A will end up eating half the quantity of veg than if they'd been able to choose 'just vegetable A'.

Some schools might consider that a worse result than the possibility of a little more waste in a choice-based system.

dives in deeper

Also, some children who actively like veg A might dismiss it if it's 'mixed up' with a despised veg B.

I am finding this vastly entertaining but also slightly alarming. I am also not clear on why it is OK to waste food in a binary veg environment but not in a multi veg environment.

Also, OP stated several times that she didn't mean unlimited.

looks suspiciously at the thread

Is this some sort of stealth-gender thing?

DC's school only usually offer one veg. Sometimes that is farmhouse veg though which I assume is mixed. It's crap.
DS2 really loves the dinners though and would have them daily if I let him. Even the vile sounding chicken sausage

Don't bring it up with the school. As others have said save your suggestions for things that really bother you/your child.

He's your responsibility. Schools are asked to do more and more for children; provide before and after school care, provide healthy meals, cover a bigger and bigger curriculum... What about allowing them to get on and concentrate on providing a good education?

What is stealth gender? Do we need to change Roger to Belinda to see if the outcome is the same?

Moot point anyway, they only ever eat the sausage or fish fingers and the bread. The veg gets scraped into the slop bucket and mixed with lumpy custard.

shall I add, for the sake of brightening up the discussion, that in my day (which was admittedly decades ago) the entire meal was put on your plate and you had to eat it. We all had a balanced meal and there was no waste. Well, there was a BIT of waste because I for one was pretty good at squishing up the kidney from the steak and kidney stew, smearing it into a thin layer all over my plate and hiding any that was left under my fork.

Sometimes we also had tears. Mine were generally on ravioli day (Wednesdays)...but these days I love ravioli - maybe because I was repeatedly exposed to it in childhood.

Thanks for the mixed, interesting and entertaining responses
To summarise:
No, I didn't mean unlimited
No, I am not going to bring it up with the school, but
I still don't think I'm bring entirely U
However it's not important enough in the scheme of things to complain!

also we used to fight over the skin off the custard. To this day I like to make proper custard (rather than pouring it out of a tin or carton) so that, as it cools, I can pinch the skin in the middle, lift it gently like a wigwam till it 'plops' free, then lower it into my mouth and savour it.

skin of the custard, boak . That definitely goes in the slop bucket for me

the skin is the best bit - all slippery and satiny on one side, but creamy and custardy like really expensive velvet on the other side. It must be a luxury food item :)

We could have sat next to each other, fourkids. I'd have eaten the kidneys for you if you took care of the custard skin for me . That's how we got around the "plate must be empty" rule.