Nursery Meals - appalling?

[TheBlushBaby]

I have been looking at nurseries and the meals provided. I plan to raise my son plant-based with white meats occasionally, and with no processed foods. I like to cook everything from scratch and can happily make extras. I make all sauces, seed loaf, and everything else I can.

Of course this works under our roof as it's how we eat, but this isn't the way for everyone.

I was very shocked reading the meal plan for the nursery. Can I send my son with packed lunch? Does their menu seem very carb heavy to anyone else? It's all cheese, breads, pastas, potatoes! Am I overthinking this?

Plant based with meat isn't plant based

I can' get past the fact that the OP had a sushi bar at school! Not in the slightest .

Where were you at school? I'm ancient but went to my first Japanese restaurant about forty years ago when they were VERY expensive, and a teeny bit of sushi was a small part of the meal. There simply wasn't that amount of good quality suitable fish available here then. I remember working in London in the late 1980s/early 1990s and IIRC Pret A Manger was the first place to do affordable sushi - everything else was only for the bankers.

Over thinking. You will have plenty more things to worry about once nursery starts
Also most nurseries don't allow you to bring in your own food

As a child minder I have had exactly 3 kids over 18 months of age who would eat salad or raw veg or any veg for that matter! And as for the packed lunches I have seen, that menu is a gourmet feast in comparison 😲 but the kids just wouldnt put anything remotely healthy except a bit of fruit anywhere near their mouths!

Exasperating trying to provide a healthy balanced diet that some kids will eat doesn't even come close.

Where is the OP?

It looks perfectly fine to me and yes they would be happy to not give the pudding but I wouldn't be worried about them.

Unless you are vegetarian

Certainly wouldn't call it appalling.

Maybe op grew up in Japan

There seems to be a huge misunderstanding on this thread on what 'plant-based' means... it doesn't mean just veg!
It means fruit and veg, potatoes, beans, lentils, grains, nuts, seeds etc etc. It even means bread, pasta, spaghetti, etc etc. Nowadays, all plant-based really means is no dairy or meat! Everything else is plant-based.

Oh and all of the above things mentioned are CARBS. Fruit are carbs too!

No, I went to an international school in Surrey. They tried very hard with the menu and had exotic fruits from many countries which all the students loved. Dragon fruit, horned melon, guava, sugar apples and Japanese peaches were some common favourites.

We had a great school lunch menu but I was still a bit shocked about the nursery.

It's nothing to be shocked about. It's a well balanced menu with plenty of variety.

I understand what you don't like about it. To me the main question would be if the meals are made fresh at the nursery, or brought in by a catering company? If they are delivered I wouldn't like that at all and would keep looking.

A pizza made from scratch (well the toppings at least) is not a bad thing to ear at all! Home made chips (they won't deep fry them so essentially roast potatoes) are also fine. As long as there is also a salad and boiled veg on the side.

My kids' nursery is really good at cooking food from different cultures too, which the one you posted doesn't seem to be doing? It's important to me that my kids broaden their horizons when it comes to food away from fried meat, potatoes and cheese.

This week they had Lamb curry with rice, veggie burgers, Mexican chilli, lentil casserole for lunches; and chickpea wraps, crumpets with cheese, baked potatoes with beams for tea.

Regarding the pudding: ours also have pissing with every meal but it's almost always cut up fruit or natural yogurt.

PUDDING not pissing...

crispbutty

As others have suggested, more beans, chickpeas and vegetables so a lentil cottage pie instead of Quorn, bean chilli instead of Quorn, etc.

DD's nursery also has (mild) veg curry fairly often, sometimes with paneer, sometimes lentils, sometimes chickpeas.

Just had a quick look at their menu and there's also cheese and courgette pasta bake, Spanish omelette, and cheese and onion flan with grated carrot, and pitta/veg sticks with hummus as a snack.

The nursery menu sounds more appropriate for a young child than OP's notions of what is suitable.
You can't feed growing kids just vegetables, fgs.

I understand what you don't like about it. To me the main question would be if the meals are made fresh at the nursery, or brought in by a catering company? If they are delivered I wouldn't like that at all and would keep looking

Yy that's the decider really.

It has the potential to be pretty good.heeps of hidden veg in the spaghetti sauce, home made dough and pizza sauce. Really nice and fresh. Maybe even local fish /produce

Or it has the potential to be awful. Really poor quality mince and catering company sauces, reformed chicken roll/joints for the roast and the awful cheap frozen unidentifiable fish. And a greasy mess that's kept warm all morning and that really awful bread. And that awful plastic grated cheese that places buy.

It looks fine. Beware of making him feel excluded by not eating as the others and also if potential backlash in terms of him craving junk foods.

It looks OK to me OP. Small children need cards as they burn off so much energy. Agree that if vegetarian kids don't like quorn it could be a problem.

Yes, it's carb heavy but toddlers love carbs ( I presume their body needs them and this will fill them up for the rest of the day) No establishment feeds sushi to toddlers.

'I plan to feed my child..." famous last words!!!

Carbs are not the devil's food, in fact they are a necessary part of a balanced diet.

The menu looks fine, other than the amount of Quorn for vegetarian children (and meat for non-vegetarians ). A variety of pulses would be far better. It sounds like perhaps a menu from the north of England where there is a mistaken belief that every meal needs to contain meat.

In London a lot of the meals at nurseries are vegetarian for all children I have found.

Looks absolutely fine op, not exactly turkey twizzlers, pizza and burgers. I would be happy with that.

Our school meals dont actually mention it on the menu but they have hidden veg in some things and some of the cakes are made with vegies to sweeten them, but the kids dont know it

They have 3 choices for pudding - fruit, yogurt or whatever 'pud', biscuit or fruit salad type thing there is that day.

I think its pretty common to have a pudding at school to round off the meal, for many kids thats the only cooked meal they will have all day.

Quite surprised at people saying they would prefer their kids to have yogurt as puddings are too sugary when many kids yogurts have more sugar in them than a bit of sponge cake! Unless they are using naturaly low sugar yogurt normal yogurts have got sugar too!

You're overthinking it. Apart from the quorn (which I refuse to give DD because of what it does to my stomach ) there's nothing wrong with that menu. Kids need carbs. If you don't like it, hire a nanny or send him to a childminder and provide your own food.