A loaf and a block of cheese is not lunch for ten days

[ZazieSheHer]

So some of the free school lunch boxes contain very little food.

Marcus Rashford condemns free school meal packages

“...a package, supposedly containing £30 worth of food to last for 10 days, comprising just a loaf of bread, some cheese, a tin of beans, two carrots, two bananas, three apples, two potatoes, a bag of pasta, three Frubes, two Soreen bars and a tomato”.

mobile.twitter.com/RoadsideMum/status/1348646428084760576

Can’t imagine what it’s like home schooling hungry kids. Would like to say I’m shocked but I’m not.

@GoodQueenAlysanne

My sons lunch today will be two big cheese and ham wraps, a large portion of grapes, a banana, a glass of orange juice, then probably a biscuit or two with a hot chocolate. And he'll probably ask for a pancake or toast at about 3.15 ish. He's 10, almost the same height as me, and still growing, he eats like a horse.

If he had a parcel like the one in the op, it would go like this

Lunch 1: Toast (2 slices) and cheese, an apple, a banana, frube.

1. Same

3.Same minus banana.

1. Potatoe, baked with the last of the cheese, 1/3 tin of beans, and 1/2 a carrot. , no other fillings.
2. ^Same again minus the cheese.
3. 1/3 bag of pasta, 1/3 of a tomatoe. No sauce, no cheese, no fruit. Soreen bar.
4. Repeat.
5. Repeat but no soreen bar.
6. The last 1/3 of the beans.

10.?

As a top up it would really help, but it's not £30 worth of food.

You know that a school meal wouldn't consist of anywhere near this amount of food?

A filled roll, some carrot and cucumber sticks, breadstick or tortilla chips and a piece of fruit and traybake would be the absolute maximum they'd get for a picnic style lunch, with either juice, milk or water.

@SFHJ

Unpopular opinion. Sorry but it’s for school lunches why should it be £30 a week, it’s not for a whole weeks shop, maybe it’s changed to the parcel which does contain the lunches for the relevant amount of days as it’s more cost effective for the schools providing it. There is only limited budgets and our grandchildren are going to paying for this for rest of their lives. Why can’t people be grateful for the help they do get. People are always wanting more.

It's still costing us £30 though. The company are charging the government £30 per parcel but only spending £5 on the food. It's a disgrace but it just about sums up this country.

Am I being dim or old fashioned? In my day free school meals comprised of a hot meal..meat and 2 veg stuff and even a pud ( even if the dreaded saego!). I thought for kids entitled to free school meals that the school meal 2as their main meal of the day- that was the point to ensure they were fed properly.
£30 to feed a kid a proper meal for 10 days is pushing it but just possible. I assumed that is why the hampers were supposed to be £30 of food
This content is not a main meal. It is a packed lunch. The kids will get malnutrition if they live on this for 10 days as their main meal...it lacks protein needed for a growing child. It lacks folic acid form green veg. Etc
If the Gov spent £30 on packed lunch for 10 days then they are blithering idiots throwing tax payers money down the drain for a bunch of crap...for goodness sake at the least supply brown bread, milk and a few eggs! And something green in way of a bit of salad,
So what is it supposed to be: packed lunch food supplies or the main meal of the day for these kids?

This makes me so angry. I can imagine a great deal of the perishable items will end up in the bin as there isnt enough to actually make anything with or they will go off before they're used. So the kids will still be hungry, the exchequer will be millions of pounds worse off and more waste will be generated. But a few wealthy people will be profiteering. It is appalling.
Personally, I don't think that a small number of people abusing the voucher system justifies ending it, but if it does have to end then there has to be a better way than this.

[quote IndieTara]@5zeds

Carrot soup or a tomato sandwich??
My child is a good eater but wouldn't like either of those!
Our children are not in the poorhouse being only entitled to eat gruel!
Amd how do you make one loaf of bread last 10 days once it's opened?[/quote]
Also I presume it's not actually 10 days the food has to last once delivered and opened, but 12, if it's presumably to cover Mon-Fri for two weeks. So clearly the bread would be mouldy by the 2nd week and the limited fruit/veg may well be going rotten by then (I can't imagine it was that fresh to start with). Never mind the tuna in the money bags (used money bags?! Money is filthy....).
This is all just disgusting and yet also so depressingly predictable.

To be honest, i look at threads like this and wonder when the Government became responsible for feeding children?

To be honest I look at posts like this and wonder why people don't realise that it is in everyone's interests for all children to be well fed and well looked after.

@ICanTuckMyBoobsInMyPockets

A tomato sandwich? Who eats a fucking tomato sandwich?

I do but I’m not a child eating it for lunch and know its nutritional value is sweet fuck all.

You know that a school meal wouldn't consist of anywhere near this amount of food?

That depends on whether they provided a hot lunch normally, not a "picnic style lunch". I don't think jacket potatoes and pasta are unreasonable for a hot lunch, especially for children over about 8. FSM is supposed to be a filling and nutritious meal with the expectation that it might possibly be the one decent meal of the day. Not a light snack.

I just heard an interview with a head teacher, the staff in his school are topping up from their own pockets. It’s a bloody disgrace.

@ICanTuckMyBoobsInMyPockets

A tomato sandwich? Who eats a fucking tomato sandwich?

I do but I like a bit of spring onion as well. The food is a disgrace for £30 and it isn't just that the children are being short changed, tax payers are being robbed.

I would have olive oil and salad leaves in my tomato sandwich!

You have to be careful what food goes in the hampers, you must not presume the families will have big fridges and extensive cooking equipment. Some families will be living in temporary accommodation with limited facilities.

[quote apalledandshocked]@emptydreamer I dont think it is the governements evil plan to starve children. I think they are completely apathetic which is worse. I do think that it is significant that the chairperson of the company is a tory donor. The children are just collaterol.[/quote]
I really would attribute this to mismanagement rather than an orchestrated plan by a tory donor to make money out of poor families. This sounds quite far-fetched, and as I said - I saw similar, or even worse, inefficiencies in "social project" cases where I am fully prepared to swear that the management had the best of intentions and weren't after personal enrichment.

This does not, of course, negate the fact that this IS a blatant mismanagement of public funds, and has to be investigated. People defending the cost / benefit ratio in this case as "what about overheads" or "totally enough for 10 lunches" also get a from me.

In short, everyone is unreasonable here.

@Idontwannadance1

I was asking someone why the schools were giving out hampers instead of vouchers this time and was genuinely upset to hear that it was because parents were selling the food vouchers for half price so literally taking the food away from their children.

But that seems like a far better solution.

They sell the £30 voucher for £15, put £15 in the lecky and are still able to get three times as much food for the children as they are getting with this criminal scam.

If I wanted a cheaper sandwich I wouldn't have a dry tomato one.

To be honest I look at posts like this and wonder why people don't realise that it is in everyone's interests for all children to be well fed and well looked after.

This is surely the one time where even thise judge people and benefit bashers have to at least acknowledge that much of this now is no ones fault. Redundancies amd job losses are sky high and ots only set to get worse.

Those in genuine need outnumber the feckless before but surely now it cant be ignored that many will just be victims if the pandemic.

Either way its not the poor kids fault is it. I mean why waste 30 quid on something almost unusable to prove a point when many would probably have been happy with less moneys wory provided it haD actually been used wisely.

People are just complaining because they want the vouchers rather than the food...and we all know why...

Why? I don't drink, I don't smoke. I simply want the dignity of being able to choose and plan how to feed my own child. Not to be told how to or what to feed them or be grateful for sub standard, lacking in nutrients food, as though I cannot be trusted and should be grateful for whatever I am given just because my ex was a cheating abuser who left me as a single parent.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

If I wanted a cheaper sandwich I wouldn't have a dry tomato one.

Tomato sandwiches are very wet, nothing remotely dry about them.

Unless families literally eat nothing why would they sell a £30 voucher for £15? Surely even if there is only one parent and one child they will spend more than £15 a week on food?

Dinners at my kids school cost £11 per child per week for low quality food that my kids don't really like to eat. Last lockdown food parcels were the cheapest quality probably coming via the same catering company to save money. Same sort of thing 1 carrot, 2 apples, small block cheese, some beans. No tuna in a bag though 🤢.

School meals have no improved much in many areas since Jamie Oliver did his campaign. It doesn't have to be this way though. One school I worked at in Hackney had amazing food and many of the people working in the kitchen were parents or local people who actually cared about the children's nutrition. In Dorset one local father set up a company to provide good quality food www.localfoodlinks.org.uk/.

We get vouchers now. I can provide better quality food that they will actually eat this way. Also this way the teachers aren't running around trying to deliver the food parcels on top of everything else they are trying to do.

@ineedaholidaynow

You have to be careful what food goes in the hampers, you must not presume the families will have big fridges and extensive cooking equipment. Some families will be living in temporary accommodation with limited facilities.

Absolutely - and when vouchers were given, some families said they did not help them as they couldn't afford the fuel cost to cook a hot meal at home, or didn't have facilities, nor had anywhere to store a weeks worth of food meaning they couldn't get shopping delivered from a supermarket that was too far to walk to - the latter assuming they could swap the vouchers for cash because they couldn't be used online.

This food is awful, no doubt about it, but vouchers (although preferable to the limited food depicted) weren't a panacea for every family. For some the best solution would be for the child to get a hot meal at school, or delivered to them, but again there are reasons why this might be difficult to arrange for all.

Unless families literally eat nothing why would they sell a £30 voucher for £15?

They'd need far more to keep their fridge full of beer cold anyway

I doubt very much that its the case just people like to assume that everyone who gets benefits is scum.

A pp mentioned the price of frubes themselves vs paying someone minimum wage, to open packs and count them out.

It's extraordinary. Being paid to count frubes, tomatoes and potatoes. It's like those one of those random, imaginary, primary school maths problem scenarios come to life. "Mark has 200 potatoes, to last 10 days. There are 600 children entitled to FSM. A). How long will it take him to count and bag the potatoes? B). How long until the government sees that Mark has bought himself a new car, watch, and caravan, but only 200 potatoes C). The probability no-one will do anything is 50/50, roll a dice 100 time to determine how worried Mark should be, realistically."

@5zeds

Pasta/bread/potatoe. Main carb Fruit/soreen loaf/frubes. Pudding Beans/carrots/cheese. Flavour/protein

I’d say a little light on protein but probably enough for ten lunches

But not worth £30, which is what we (as taxpayers) are paying for it. Though we're probably paying more since legend has it that government contracts vastly overpay for things.

Goodness me.

This is an absolute disgrace.

The problem and solution here are blindingly obvious.

If you give a company £30 per child, that company will both incur costs and want to make a profit. Clearly £30 of food will not go to the family.

However, the idea that less than £10 is being provided in food is shocking. As is the quality of the food being provided (tuna in money bags ffs, bread that's meant to last 10 days and a couple of carrots) .

It's profiteering of the very worst kind - literally taking food from children.

For exactly the same cost, rather than give money to these catering companies, the government could provide £30 supermarket vouchers (which could be issued online) directly to the families.

As such they would benefit not only from the full amount, but could buy food their children would actually eat.

We've already seen numerous companies/individuals making huge sums over COVID that have links to people in govt but this is the worst yet.

I am really, really .