Why are school meals so bad?

[MondayImInLove]

I am not complaining about the quality, so not a question of costs.

What I don’t understand is why do they always have cake, biscuits, fried ingredients, lots of sauce etc?

I know the cakes are in theory healthier (sugar free, not sure about fat free) but it gives the DC the idea that fruit/yoghurt is not good enough and there has to be cake.

Why do they have to serve a potato (chips) option next to the veg? Of course most children will end up eating the fries. If the option was not there they would eat the veg.

Why are all mains covered in sauce, never steamed fish and veg for example?

I just don’t get it...

Yes, I think in general they do need potato/pasta/rice every day. DD1 is tiny and eats like a horse, she’d be starving without it.
The meals at our school are fine. Don’t necessarily agree with pudding every day but I can’t get too worked up about it. The portions are tiny and mine are very active.

Yes, kids do need carbs at every meal. And not just at lunch. It's a totally different requirement for growing kids who never sit still, to adults.
Puddings I agree they could do without. I'm not sure I've ever heard any parent be glad that they get a pudding every day at school.

At dcs school the chocolate cake contains courgette the kids don’t realise. There is a good fruit selection daily and yoghurt too. Chips are once a week at most, yes potato in some form (mash, boiled or roasted) are available daily.

I went to two primary schools, in both there was a potato choice and vegetable choice every day plus the main component of the meal.

In my frist school you had to have a vegetable but the potato was optional, in my second you had to have a potato and the vegetable was optional I remember once pleading to be allowed a vegetable instead because I didn't like the potato options, nope, they made me eat the disgusting boxed powdered mash

In hindsight the second school was in a poorer area so may have had pupils in more need of calories hence the potato requirement? Not sure.

I agree carbs are important, at every single lunch though? And it is usually most of what they eat.

I guess what I don’t like is that fact that instead of only proposing healthy options they always seem to offer a not-so-healthy one alongside.
Why not just yoghurt for dessert sometimes? Why not fish/courgettes/a piece of bread with cheese, that is balanced isn’t it?

Maybe I need to get over it.

At dcs school the chocolate cake contains courgette the kids don’t realise
That is my issue!
Why not give them courgettes, why hidden in a cake??
How will the DC realize that the school courgette cake is ok every day but in real life you can’t have cake after every meal?

I'm not sure I've ever heard any parent be glad that they get a pudding every day at school
Then why do they do it? No idea

At our primary school the meals are good, and they do have fruit salad / yogurt / cheese and biscuits on some days instead of cakes / cookies. There's a three weekly rotating menu and i think it's really balanced - includes meat free Mondays, roast dinner on a weds and fish Fridays. And it's county wide as far as i know so it's not like our school is an anomaly.

Because it may be the only hit meal a child gets in the day, so needs to be substantial. Because many children won’t eat courgette cooked as a side but will eat it hidden in cake. Because the parents who are concerned about their child’s diet will aim to balance things outside of school but too many kids parents don’t feed their children a balanced diet. Because there’s nothing inherently wrong with cake or dessert, and teaching children to make balanced choices is part of educating them around healthy food.

My two DC will opt for fruit over cake if they don’t feel like cake, they’ll pick soup instead of dessert (our school dinners are soup and main or main and dessert), they don’t often choose chips - they prefer curry/chilli/lasagne type meals that mirror what they get at home.

bread is a carb?!
DD1 is always offered freshly baked bread alongside the meal and fruit/yoghurt as a pudding alternative (which she often has as she doesn’t like cake).
Chips once a week, on a Friday. Otherwise it’s rice/roast potatoes etc. I have no issues with that whatsoever. I do think baked beans and sweet corn together sounds rank but she insists she likes it 🤷🏻‍♀️.

How will the DC realize that the school courgette cake is ok every day but in real life you can’t have cake after every meal?

Because you tell them? DD is 4 and she accepts that she has pudding after lunch at school (if she wants it) but not at home.

Do children really need to eat potato/pasta/rice at lunch every single day?

Yes. Children need calories and complex carbs in their meals. They are not orthorexic, dieting, women.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with potato, pasta or rice for a growing child.

Wow... the school I work in only offers chips once a week. hardly anything is fried and there are at least four types of veg and a salad bar available every day. They have a roast dinner once a week and the cawl and quiche are both AMAZING.

That said, we're a bog-standard comprehensive.

I think it is a cultural thing as well as money thing. Do you remember that little girl who had a blog about school dinners and kids from across the world sent in photos of their school dinners? Reading that made it blindngly obvious that the american and british dinners were dire compared to those of other countries (who also served their food on areal plate rather than prison trays like over here).
We don't value good food for children.

Realistically carbs do need to be available every day, especially as it is the only meal that some of the pupils will get but the school shouldn't be expecting pupils to choose between the carbs or veg but rather offering a small portion of both.

Yes children do need carbs every day. They are growing and trying to learn too. If you starve them of carbs they’ll turn feral by 13:30.

dottysmum menu looks amazing. Ours isn’t that great. Very bland in comparison.

Broccoli and cauliflower curry.

Veg finger with chips and baked beans.

Cheesy pasta and peas.

It’s uninspired.

I am willing to accept I am overreacting

And yes I understand the importance of carbs for growing children, I just feel like that is most of what they eat at school.

I know the school lunch can be the only hot meal for some children, and that some parents don’t care about a balanced diet, but doesn’t it mean that this one meal needs to be as healthy as possible and full of what they might be missing at home (proteins, fruit/veg) and less of what they are likely to have too much of (carbs)?

Our school often have a yoghurt or fruit or a ‘mango milk’, yes it’s alongside things like a small cookie or cake and custard, but they have so cater to so many kids, often with minimal budgets. The pudding is a good way to up the calories cheaply. Kids need calories. They need carbs and fat. They don’t necessarily need the sugar but the sugar is a good way of sneaking in the better stuff.
Kids are fussy! Being strict about their diets get you nowhere.

My child’s school doesn’t serve cakes or biscuit. The unealthiest thing I can think of are jam sandwiches twice a week as an after school snack... i don’t know what a pudding is - is that a dessert? I know they only get fruits as a desserts.

Actually our school has changed providers today. The new menu looks awful. I think I’m going to have to do a lunchbox.

A lot of the kids at my (secondary) school only have their school lunch. They have nothing until the next lunchtime. Carbs are needed to keep them going for 24 hours. At least they are fed. Not everyone has parents who care about carbs and health. Many have parents who don't feed them at all.

For large numbers of children, their school lunch is their main (or maybe only) meal of the day. So yes, they do need a decent amount of starchy carbs like rice / pasta / potatoes every day

Sorry, my post took so long to finish that it was a massive x-post with lots of others