"Healthy" school lunches

[ambereeree]

My DC started reception and I was told by the teacher to go for school lunch as it becomes a social thing and encourages children to eat.
The school doesn't allow crisps or chocolates in the packed lunch and the school lunch is a balanced healthy meal... Or so I was told.
My DCs lunch is now the highlight of the day and when I ask how school was all I get told about the sausages or burger they ate along with the chocolate cake or icecream jelly.
I admit I'm a bit strict about sweets and chocolate and the first day sent in a packed lunch of cheese sandwich, chopped fruit, vegetable sticks and crackers. I normally give a biscuit or piece of chocolate after dinner but not everyday.
DC now asks before school whether they'll have school lunch and how excited they are to eat the pudding. I'll never be able to send in a packed lunch again will I?
What's happened to the healthy school lunch advocated by Jamie Oliver?!?!

Yes it’s piss poor. Our school serves sliced pizza every single day... so every day a kid can get a pizza slice and pudding for lunch! Terrible.

I think the school lunches are balanced overall. The sweet thing probably isn’t much, and you can skip pudding in the evening if you’re worried.

I think it’s wonderful your dc likes school dinners, as it is more sociable, they can eat with peers, have some variety etc. Maybe try new things. Plus it’s free in the infants!

The puddings in my school are tiny, like a matchbox size piece of cake with a ladle of custard.

They have cold option only at the moment, roll or baguette with either cheese, ham or chicken, veg sticks and a cookie.

Fruit at snack time.

I think it's nice to have school meals, the portions are controlled and very small, it might be pizza or burger but they are cooked using controlled sugar and fat.

Glad to hear the portion sizes are tiny. I do find it amusing though my DC is having the time of their life eating lunch and telling me about puddings

I’d really take it as a positive that he’s enjoying them so much.

At our primary they do have hot lunches, which is sometimes sausage and mash, but can also be a range of healthier options. They’re normally be plenty of veg in every lunch they have too.

My DD has just started Reception and I have to say the lunches are great - yesterday was roast chicken, skin on potatoes, peas and carrots, with melon after. They do healthy versions of less healthy food IYSWIM - so tomorrow is cod goujon wraps (fish finger sandwiches!)

They only get a sweet treat on Fridays - tomorrow it’s flapjack.

But I mainly went for it because I thought she’d find it sociable.

Our school put out the recipes for some of the puddings. Portions are tiny and they use healthier substitutes so our school does a date slice. Dates reduce the sugar, whole meal flour and oats instead of refined white flour.

They also use carrot, sweet potato or swede grated in some of the cake recipes.

At least you still have hot lunches. Infants and juniors have 4 sandwich/roll fillings to choose from.

Is there a menu either on school website or catering company's website? If not the school may be able to provide one. So you could check what they're actually eating each day!

The puddings also tend to be fairly sugar free, or sweetened with fruit/fruit juice. And at dd's school they only get them if they actually eat their main meal. And the mains are usually very healthy. They do have fish and chips/potatoes on Fridays, but other days, it's roast chicken with potatoes and veg, chicken curry with vegetable rice, jacket with tuna and salad, etc.

Though dd did say that on Monday they ran out of meatballs for the meatballs with spaghetti, so they had to give everyone at the end of the line a packet of crisps, so she claims to have eaten crisps, plain pasta and pudding. I'm not entirely sure how accurate that story was though.

This is ours

Ah piss it's blurry...

I had the same approach to my Dcs lunch as you. and very rarely have puddings at home. They would have school dinners in primary twice a week and honestly it was the highlight of the week. They loved them and I took it as a positive.

I wouldn't jump to conclusions - you might find the sausages and burgers have lots of hidden veg in them, and chocolate cake could be low sugar and contain beetroot etc.

The schools need to try to get veg, fibre and nutrients into kids that won't readily/knowingly eat veg - so it might be much healthier than you think OP.

I always think I'd like to have school dinners for lunch! Although they have something sweet it is small and they offer fruit as well.
My daughter's school are supplying packed lunches instead of hot meals at the mo, but even these sound good. Tuna pasta, wraps, pasties, sausage rolls etc!

Have you ever tried the "cakes"?

They are usually v low sugar & sweetened with weird concoctions of fruit & veg. The custard may also contain no sugar - milk contains natural sugars which make it taste sweet enough to a young child's palate.

They will always provide puddings as cost is an issue, its cost more to provide the appropriate amount of calories via meat/fish/veg etc that from a portion of starchy cake with custard. School caterers rely on the pudding as a cheap way to bulk out the meal and the kids enjoy it. Children do need carbs & fat, more so than grown ups may.

Most of the puddings taste like sugar free rusks with custard on.

My boys told me about the amazing chicken nuggets, the chicken was "so much nicer than the ones you make Mum"
The ones the had at school were Quorn

I agree with pp, the puddings are tiny and tend to be low sugar I think. I'm really impressed with some of your kids lunches! Pre covid the lunches at my dcs school seemed ok but were never enough food for my ds (dd was fine). Since they've gone back they have offered a two week rotating menu and it looks a bit crap tbh! The ten days consist of fish and chips twice, pizza twice, burgers, hot dogs, Turkey roll and cheese roll, then it starts again. There is also a grab bag option which is a cheese or ham roll, piece of fruit and a small treat. I'm sending them in with packed lunches as I just think it will be better food with more variety for them. I'll re think if they change the menu or the kids missed having something hot.

Ha! "It's a sociable thing" roughly translates to "school get funding per pupil"

This wouldn’t be something that concerned me at all, especially since I’m under the impression the puddings contain very little sugar. Frankly I can’t be arsed to hide beetroot in a chocolate cake so more power to them! There’s also a very clear boundary between what happens at school and what happens at home.

It’s redundant for me anyway as my dd’s school doesn’t offer a pudding at all but I’m mainly focusing on getting new foods into her and the social side as well as practising table manners/skills.

We’re hopefully coming out the other side of a fussy stage that worsened during lockdown and I think my dd eats better and a wider variety with other people. I’m just chuffed she appears to be giving everything a bash even if she decides she doesn’t like it. The school have the means to offer things I can’t on a regular basis.

Having worked in school dinners in the not to distant past I can honestly say that most of it is crap! It's the cheapest, fattiest cuts of meat and mince! The menus may sound lovely but what is on the menu and what is actually given to the children look nothing alike!!!

Sorry posted to soon! The cooks ( kitchen managers) are under constant pressure to cut costs, this unfortunately leads to cutting corners as well!

It makes me furious. How dare schools police packed lunches while providing crap like that? It doesn't matter if the burgers are small! The children should be getting a decent portion of nutritious food, not small portions of crap. As for the 'non-sugary' puddings... at my dc's primary school I was proudly told that their new catering company's surprisingly delicious flapjacks (which parents were invited to sample) had no sugar in at all... only golden syrup!

Can't really say as all schools are so different on this. I taught in a school which had great selection, properly home cooked, very healthy. DC's school has outsourced to a company who send a wonderful menu home to parents full of all the nutrionally balanced options, but in actual fact all the portions are tiny (suitable for Reception, not for Year 6, but all get the same), everything is semi-cooked and out of a packet, and most things are beige. It's dreadful, even worse then when I was a pupil in the 80s.

If your child really likes the school dinners, why not have them one or two days a week and packed lunches the rest of the time. Even if they're grey and awful, it will only be two meals a week.

I persevered with school lunches for years - then we had the opportunity to try them . They really were disgusting and tasteless . My children haven’t had one since . I would imagine your child’s puddings are actually pretty innocent and probably don’t taste of much . I’d rather my children eat normal food and have the odd naughty treat so they learn how to balance food themselves . My children’s weight is much better now I’m feeding them - they were a bit on the light side before and ate everything under the sun when I picked them as they’d not eaten much at school