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.

Food vouchers have always been denigrated by the left in the past as stigmatising and demeaning, removing choice and agency from the parent. Until Marcus Rashford suggested them that is, then suddenly they became a marvellous idea.

During the previous lockdown my mother, who is an OAP and is shielding for medical reasons, was receiving unsolicited food parcels from the government of basic store cupboard ingredients like pasta, tea, rice etc in case she was unable to shop. She wasn't, she's very au fait with online shopping and doesn't live on a tight budget, but it was a nice gesture nonetheless.

Why can't they do something similar with children eligible for FSM? Who was responsible for procuring and delivering the food parcels to my mother?

@Ihatemyseleffordoingthis

"Local to us some parents were known to have been trying to use the vouchers to purchase alcohol" so therefore all children, locally, on FSM should only get a manky loaf of sliced white and 2 and half carrots to eat?

Why are you buying into this feckless parents narrative? Because it is less uncomfortable, that is why.

That isn't what I said at all. Please point me to where in my post I said the food provided was adequate?

No system is perfect, and there are flaws with any solution. When vouchers were used, SOME people abused them. Also some people said that the vouchers were unhelpful because they could not access the relevant supermarkets, were self isolating and could not get or afford a delivery slot, or there were other issues - some schools were providing meals in school but children could not get there for example.

I saw many discussions on social media last year agreeing that providing food to those families to the value of the vouchers might be a better solution. The issue here is NOT that food has been provided per se, it is that the food supplied is substandard and clearly costs a great deal less than the cost of provision - effectively 50ps worth of food billed at 6x that.

There should have been proper oversight and control to ensure the cost billed to the schools/ LEA/ Govt was representative of the cost of the products. That hasn't happened.

YABU for making it sound worse than it is in your title.

Also why, if some parents are suspected of wanting to spend the money on something other than food, all the parents receiving vouchers are labelled as feckless and untrustworthy. But when the company outsourced to do it uses 30 pounds worth of money to buy about 8 pounds worth of food (generous estimate) and pockets the rest that is considered a good use of resources and just the way business works???

@Porcupineintherough have you ever done a baked potato in the oven on metered eletric? It’s not bloody cheap! And yes plain bread very nutritious yum yum

And get supermarkets who are expert in logistics, purchasing, distribution and food, providing decent food packs which they have proved that they can manage within their business model

Yes. Totally agree.

hey gave us bread but nothing to put in sandwiches or even butter to butter the bread? Just totally non logical

The food parcels for housebound CEVs were useless as well. They were entirely about subsidising the catering industry and nothing to do with peoples' needs. Rotten and out of date food was included in them, catering sized tins of one item etc.

This smacks of the same desire to claim credit for doing "something" which gives precious little help to the people in need.

@AWeeBit

They didn't have to create food parcels at all! They could have just distributed vouchers via schools, with no overheads whatsoever, just fucking send them a list of codes. Fucking hell.

This.

If thr government have swapped £30 of vouchers for £30 of food parcels, of which the company providing them are taking is cut then the government have deliberately moved to a worst value deal than just providing restricted vouchers to parents to buy what they need. Which begs the question: why?

The answer is likely to be the same as it always is: someone, somewhere is on the take.

Chartwells do not pay RRP for this food. They will have negotiated favourable rates from manufacturers so if they provided £30 of (RRP) food, they will have spent less than that buying the food - THAT is where overheads and profit should come from.

Not from charging the government £30 and then just providing a few £'s worth of food and pocketing the rest (as well as giving it as 'donations to the Tory party).

Every single story about this government seems to come back to someone with their greasy fingers in the pie...

Back in the real world, for a school packed lunch on a trip in Reception year, my child was provided with

• a ham& cheese sandwich
• a bag of crisps
• piece of fruit
• chocolate biscuit (kit kat type thing)
• bottle of water

This was apparently the amount of food a 4-18yo needed for lunch according to the kitchen manager.

@Cheeseboardandmincepies the point I was making is that most kids do eat cheese and/or beans.

@SendHelp30

That logic is so backwards. Do you think all parents who are struggling started off like that? What about people who are entitled to these lunches due to no fault of their own? My Mum was a RN until she fell sick and had to leave. I was a child carer, half the time she wasn’t well enough to cook so my school meal was the only proper meal I had during the day. We didn’t have a penny growing up and I often remember her going without food so I could eat. The system isn’t designed to help disabled people. There are many other people who had decent paying jobs when they had children and then circumstances changed and they can’t work one job let alone three. I know for a fact the circumstances I grew up in aren’t unusual. What do you suggest these people do? You’re being ridiculous.

@JazzyGeoff you’d be wrong, though I add a stock cube and butter usually. I did google after your rather despising comments and my method doesn’t seem that far from the recipes on line. I also eat tomato sandwiches and have since the 70s. Perhaps I’m just a peasant with substandard cooking skills.

@Porcupineintherough there was no cheese in the parcels. And one tin of beans doesn’t do a week does it?

[quote 5zeds]@JazzyGeoff you’d be wrong, though I add a stock cube and butter usually. I did google after your rather despising comments and my method doesn’t seem that far from the recipes on line. I also eat tomato sandwiches and have since the 70s. Perhaps I’m just a peasant with substandard cooking skills.[/quote]
Exactly. So I was right, you don't serve pureed carrots and water then?
But you thought it was okay to suggest that's what other people should do.

Oh ok, apologies, I misunderstood. And no of course it wouldn't.

The things is, these are replacing a school lunch, i.e. a hot meal. For many kids, this is the only hot meal they get in a day.

A sad cheese sandwich doesn't really cut it.

And regardless, these food boxes are meant to be worth £15 a week, and they clearly aren't.

Chartwells are making money out of child poverty- fuckers.

I bet all the savings are going into a tory pocket. It’s a joke, we all need to stand up and say this isn’t on. They’d be given far more nutritious meals at school so why should we accept this pittance?

Don't schools have a budget of £2;30 per meal? which means £11.50 - but this includes budget of scale & the figure has on top the cost of staffing kitchen catering cleaning etc. The bread/cheese tubes etc doesn't seem to provide the type or quality of healthy food. For instance -If as others state its processed cheese slices its an incredibly expensive waste whilst grated cheese which is also easy to use gives more for less & better value & healthier. (Checked on Tesco as an example!)

I would rather risk a couple of parents spending the vouchers on Prostitutes and fags than the rest of them having to manage on just that.
It’s an inadequate amount and it’s shit, my Dc wouldn’t eat most of that.can people without not much money not have preferences?
You can make good cheap food but you need certain equipment and knowledge that a lot of people won’t have. I could feed a loads of kids with a healthy and tasty soup or stew and home made bread but I know how to and have the time.
It’s an absolute disgrace and I could have guessed some Tory scumbag was making money out of it as that’s the default position for every decision made by this Govt.

@Grenlei I am not doing a comprehension exercise on your post - and it is just as much the general principle as your opinion that I am commenting on here, but your tone is apologist.

I don't care if some people sold the vouchers. That is not what matters at the moment. Overwhelmingly most didn't, I'd bet. Meanwhile, Chartwells etc, basically do the same thing.

Why cant they just get the catering staff to continue cooking food and parents can pick up. I truly dont believe people cant afford food. Food is REALLY cheap. Ikg of chicken drumsticks is £1.80. I think its tiring cooking morning noon and night so a cooked meal would help a lot.

It's not food to last 10 days though is it?
Its 10 lunches.
Sandwiches, a loaf of bread, a big bag of pasta and jacket potatoes seems like plenty to me.

"We gave the parents vouchers/money but apparently SOME of the parents spent most of it on booze/fags/food for themselves and only 5 pounds on the children"= disgusting
"We contacted the meal provision to a company but apparently they kept 25 pounds of EVERY box for themselves and 'Operational Costs' and only 5 pounds on the children" = a good use of resources.

@femfemlicious

Why cant they just get the catering staff to continue cooking food and parents can pick up. I truly dont believe people cant afford food. Food is REALLY cheap. Ikg of chicken drumsticks is £1.80. I think its tiring cooking morning noon and night so a cooked meal would help a lot.

How do parents who don’t live within walking distance collect the meals?

Someone needs to FOI their tender