AIBU to think school dinners are too much (food wise)?

[DragonPies]

There's always something like fish & chips, pie & mash, etc. and then a desert!

DD then has a dinner (around 6pm) and I feel like it's way too much. She's even getting a bit chubby.

I appreciate that I can stop school dinners (which I will be doing) but they shouldn't be giving kids stuff that could make them put on weight, surely?

In my experience of working in a primary school, the menu SOUNDS good but the delivery rarely matches! Parents would order chicken fajitas and it would be sloppy chicken mince in a wrap!

YY, exactly Giddy, ot sounds 'ok'
'Salad bar' not.

Give her a different tea?

I don't eat the same as my dc's. They have school dinners and I take a packed lunch to work. But we don't eat together in the evenings anyway.

Your dd isn't going to put on weight because of 5 meals out of 21. Especially school lunch ones with controlled portions. If you were that concerned you would send her with a pack lunch tomorrow, rather than 'soon'.

I love the idea that a packed lunch is somehow healthier.

No, I wouldn't. I have to pay for dinners in advance. I'm not made of money.

I would reckon at 9 its to do with her hormones and a growth spurt, my dd got a bit chubby at that age then grew to over 5 ft and grew boobs at just after her 10th birthday then her periods started not long after, if it's bothering you give her packed lunch and cut out any sugary/fatty/bad snacks, don't let her know it's an issue though, it's a bad age for them to become conscious of sir weight/size.

Now I don't have to wash my teapot either.

There's always a silver lining danTM

Well packed lunches are much cheaper so at least you'll save some when you switch.

'Since when has roast chicken and veg or spaghetti bolognese been 'not cooked' or 'crap'?'

On MN they are. 'It's a junky meal'. It is if you eat huge portions of it morning, noon and night.

You should also be getting at least 4 meals for 4 people out of 1 chicken otherwise your portion sizes are huge and you are all obese.

Washing out a teapot should be a criminal offense. DD makes our tea in the morning. Mmm, tea. I make her a cuppa when she comes home and each have a brew and whatever we've baked.

I think know it's very naive to think one meal doesn't have an affect.

It all depends on how the system works. The meals are "balanced " as they are meant to be served. If your school has a system where there's odd combos made out of who's left for the ones at the back of the queue there are times people have posted on here that their kids end up with say jacket potato rice and sweetcorn.
When originally it was meant to curry rive and veg but they ran out or someone had extra veg etc

If the last ones in end up with high carbon dinners like that then they could well be left with the sugar drop causing them to binge later on as they haven't had the protein or fat to last them longer etc

Finish off with a yogurt or cake and it's pretty much all carbs and sugar.

Could easily contribute to weight gain.

Yes but why is it always the schools that are making children fat and not the parents?

School dinners
Not enough PE
Kids giving out sweets on birthdays
School snack shops

God forbid some parents might consider how much food they're giving their kids at home/what kind of food/whether they're driving them around too often/how often they get out to play for a few hours.

They're only in school for just over 30 hours per week and that's only for 9 months of the year.

Course it's not just schools fault.

I also think this snack culture is ridiculous and is probably largely to blame.

But these menus are often deceiving amd if parents are making menu choices fir evenings based on some glossy leaflet promising a good range of healthy food and are unaware their kids living off scraps left over that can't be helping either.

I took my dd off school dinners. She was eating nothing but bread and pasta and a little bit of salad. Getting enough fruit and and veg down her to make up for what was inedible at school was very hard and it did have an impact on her health.

I now send packed lunches.

My dd always complains school dinners aren't enough.

She is very slim but tall with visible muscles.

I wish they would serve them more!

I must admit I'm also often various at the amount of people who say the portions are so small their kids are so hungry they have to give them the snacks. Often some of these snacks sound like full blown meals. Cheeses crackers and veg sticks or wraps and fruit etc and then have dinner later so effectively having the equivalent of 4 meals a day. Would sending a more filling packed lunch and being able to do away with making up for the portion deficits at school work out better long term fir health/weight etc

My dd is 9 and her weight went down while on school dinners so now she's on packed lunches as she's under weight as it is.

My DD is the same the odd days she stays for lunch. Because luckily she won't eat much of the crap they serve. I'm in Spain btw with a fantastic 'sounding' menu, except it really isn't.

I'm not sure really. I mean given the tiny size of the school dinners.

I think what causes many kids to become overweight is that they're fed too much food, regardless of the quality. You can see lots of examples of this on MN, when people talk of feeding young babies/toddlers 3 or 4 Weetabix for example.

Couple that with not taking enough exercise to burn it off, and you have a recipe for weight gain.

I regularly watch football, rugby and netball tournaments where there are around 120 kids. It's rarer than hen's teeth for any of them to be overweight, despite the awful child obesity statistics in this borough (one of the highest in London). That's because they're always playing or training - not because they eat differently to everyone else.

Yy worra

I sit here with my jaw on the floor quite often when I read about kids demolishing 4 weetabix in one go or eating half a family size pizza themselves and getting through 4 pints of milk a day etc

I still don't give dd1 a full bag of crisps and she's 10...

It almost seems children eating large portions is seen as something to be proud of by many parents.

Yet somehow they are all skin and bone, clothes hang off them...

My kids weren't impressed with school dinners due to the small size/poor quality/taste. They regularly ran out of protein and had to fill up on crappy white flour and soggy veg. Plus they were nagged into having large nasty tasting puddings. My kids used to ironically joke about school meals being 'healthy' as they were totally the opposite.

We now do pack lunches! Everyone's happy and healthier

Hahahahahahahaha...

They're tiny portions. I used to feed ds as a toddler the meal when we went in to have parent lunch with the older ones, and he came out hungry.