Schools aren't feeding children enough

[Squashpocket]

DS (5 years) has always come home from school ravenous. We have had to give him a 2 course breakfast and full meal sized 'snack' after school to get him through to dinner time. Then sometimes supper before bed as well.

I just thought 'oh well, he's busy at school', but now I'm wondering exactly how small are the portions of food at school?!?

I have sent him off to a (very active, sports based) holiday club this week with a normal packed lunch (popcorn and fruit for snack, sandwich, yoghurt, fruit, veg sticks, breadsticks and hummus and a cereal bar for lunch) and he has come home full and able to wait for his dinner. Breakfast this morning has just been a bowl of fruit and Greek yoghurt and he's fine.

So, AIBU or is school obviously not providing enough food? I'm shocked because this is not how I (fondly) remember my school dinners at all! It was all massive portions of mashed potato and puddings with custard (those were the days...). Does anyone else find this?

Mine are always hungry after school too. I think it also a time thing. Getting all the kids fed and time to play over lunchtime is a challenge. Also, I guess they need to be careful they have enough food left for those towards the end. I just feed mine a bigger breakfast and supper to make up for it.

There are rules about how calorific a school lunch should be. I think it represents about a third of their daily intake, 5-600 calories.

Would you say that his other meals and snacks equate to about 1000 calories?

If your child is very active, he might need more I guess.

Just send him with a packed lunch every day if you're not happy.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

I had a friend who was a school cook. She always complained they had to give the same portion to the tiny 4yo as to the adult size 11yo...

Ask your child what they eat at school. They might be leaving half of it.
And that lunch does sound massive, but it depends on the portion size.

Yeah, my 9 yo has recently started to complain of still being hungry after lunch at school - she said "it feels like I've barely eaten anything afterwards."

She's not a big eater generally - doesn't snack, never wants more than one portion for breakfast or dinner - which leads me to think that the portions must be really tiny.

I think that your ds has a big appetite because he is very active. He probably needs more food that the average child and so the portions are small for him, but not for all children. My 9 year old wouldn’t need a packed lunch as big as your 5 year olds.

Mine are always hungry when they get home but they have snack and they’re ok til dinner. I don’t think the kids eat much at lunch, they’re too distracted about going off to play.

During Covid they only got 15 minutes before the next bubble came in so they barely had time to fetch their lunch and sit down let alone eat anything, we all noticed the kids were hungry.

Could be have a better breakfast so he isn’t as hungry through the day, or is that all he will have?
I would send a packed lunch to school if he’s that hungry after.

It depends on the child, dd is positively stuffed after a school dinner, one of her friends runs home to raid the cupboards.
As an aside though I couldn't manage that packed lunch, and I'm a fully grown woman, maybe your sons appetite is larger than the "average" and school have set portions?

Portions are small at my son's primary. He takes packed lunches now because he was feeling so hungry after lunch.

They’re very small at my sons school as well, they have to be a certain amount of calories, so generally cheapness wins which means meals are made of cheap calorie dense foods, rather than foods that aren’t as calorie dense.

My son was having school dinners on a Friday as a treat, but they’re so small I was still having to send him in with some pack up. I know on our taster day they had catering open and samples of the meals, every other Friday its fish, chips and peas, or quorn fish, chips and peas, they get three chips! They’re not big wedges either, but three fairly small chips.

I haven't personally found the school lunches too small. I was allowed to go for lunch with my youngest and found the portions and options to be quite generous.

Your packed lunch seems quite big to me, not meaning to be the food police. I might give a lunch like that for an active holiday club as a bit of a treat lunch, but not an average school day every single day.

There is also the factor that schools are busy places, in the main.

At points in time in her school career DD is now nearly sixteen (wow)
she was so wrapped up in activities/talking to friends etc that it was almost as if she didn't have the peace to eat properly/hence would be ravenous when she got home and relaxed.

Although in primary school she always ate dinners.

I guess it varies, key is to always have healthy things on hand. Agree about cereal bars. They are sometimes useful.

Also during covid there is an additional layer of difficultiy as imagine they are not all eating at a table together anymore?

Some of the meals have half the calorie count in the puddings which arent sugary just startchy with fruit as sweetners and they can get left as a bit heavy and not like pudding (not all the meals sometines its yoghurt or fruit or a lighter sponge)

Also they do go through growth spurts I noticed, times when they seem to eat a lot, shoot up and then it tails off.

A rather sweeping statement to say schools aren't feeding children enough just because your child finds that to be the case. The packed lunch you describe is enormous - my 12 year old doesn't eat that much! Perhaps your child has a big appetite, in which case he might be better with a packed lunch for school as well.

That lunch contains about half his calories for the day. That’s fine if he isn't eating the same amount at breakfast and in the evening plus snacks in between.

A five year old boy needs between about 1,400 and 1,600 calories a day. The trouble is we’ve all lost sight of normal food amounts. Children use excess calories to grow tall as well as to lay down fat - then we think they need more because they’re tall.

Our primary school has a good choice for school lunches but portions are small - they don’t get any bigger as the children get older but should should be fine for a 5 year old. We do have a salad bar which children can go back to several times to fill up if they need to (includes bread and pasta salad) however this was not been available for most of last year due to Covid and lunches were not any bigger to reflect this. In my experience packed lunches are nearly always much bigger than school lunches, and some children do waste a lot of food in both, mainly because they want to get outside to play. Maybe your child is full and finished PL at the moment as prefers to eat little and often which may be possible at summer camp but not at school? Our MSAs are great, they encourage children to eat and try to ensure all children eat something. They will report any concerns to teaching staff to liaise with parents if they notice any child not eating enough regularly.

I think it's a mixture. That is a bigger lunch than anyone I know would eat BUT schools meals are quite small sometimes.

@Squashpocket

This is the amount of food he needs to be full though? He's active and lean and healthy (like all his friends too), but they need a lot of fuel for all that activity. He eats way more than me (because I sit on my bum all day).

The contents of the lunchbox is a realistic balance between healthy things, things that will fill him up and things he will actually eat.

If your 5 year old eats way more than you, one of you clearly has the wrong size portions!

Have you asked his school for details of what they consider a portion?

@Looneytune253

I think (generally) our perceptions on what a child should be eating is skewed. When my daughter was small we had to do some research on portion sizes and portions of weetabix for a toddler were half for a toddler and one for a young child. Sandwich would be one slice of bread. I think we all over feed our kids and maybe the school portions are correct but they're used to what we give them at home. Not personally at you OP but could be part of the root cause of our rising obesity rates.

There's another thread running where the OP and most respondents are horrified her mother in law only gave her 3 year old one weetabix for breakfast.

I work in a (tiny) school and the dinner lady makes sure the children who eat more get bigger portions. There's often seconds too. She even knows who likes broccoli/cauli with short stems and who likes it with long stems etc and tries to give the kids what they will eat. She's wonderful! And our middays definitely pay close attention to what children eat and encourage them to eat more. Still a lot ends up wasted and I agree with a pp above that the starchy puddings are just jot appealing. MNers are often annoyed school dinner kids get puddings but children with packed lunches aren't allowed a chocolate biscuit - the puddings are nowhere near such a treat as a chocolate biscuit, they basically taste savory!

@fourminutestosavetheworld

There are rules about how calorific a school lunch should be. I think it represents about a third of their daily intake, 5-600 calories.

Would you say that his other meals and snacks equate to about 1000 calories?

If your child is very active, he might need more I guess.

Just send him with a packed lunch every day if you're not happy.

NHS says a child of 7 to 10 should have 1,600 to 2,000 calories a day (the higher amounts are age).

I’ve seen the portions and they are tiny. Fine for most 5 year olds probably (I agree we have a poor understanding of how little children should eat), not fine for my 5 foot 2 11-year-old who does 20,000 steps a day.

But also some children do have a bigger appetite than others, and still manage to stay within the healthy range.

Our headteacher tells parents that the school lunches are very small. My eldest was always starving after school when he had them, so we switched him to packed lunches. He typically takes a sandwich, veg sticks, a piece of fruit, cheese chunk or boiled egg and a ‘treat’, which maybe a yoghurt, a cereal bar, some crisps, breadsticks, plain popcorn etc

Yeah that lunch is pretty substantial!

Could he move over to packed lunch if you arent happy with the school dinners?

He gets a 'clean plate award' every day

Wtf? That's utterly stupid. Some children just don't have big appetites! Why award those who do? Celebrating a big appetite or a hungry kid is ridiculous!

My best friend in school had emotional issues around food after she lost her Mum at the age of 5 and her Nanny abused her over food.

Can you imagine her feelings on the subject! Or a child with an illness or condition?

My sister was in charge of dinners for several schools. The LA were very strict as to ths calorific content of every meal and it was set at different amounts for infant /junior ages. These were from guidelines for how much a childif a certain age 'needed'.
In addition each portion would hsve to be under a certain price to make, which was also very low ie less than 50p (can't recall exactly) - smaller schools found this difficult to adhere to as any waste was a larger percentage per child, than in a larger school.
However as a teacher i used to think that esp for the junior kids the portions were small ie 8 chips.

The portion sizes are tailored to children's stomachs, which are about the size of the child's fist. Of course they would seem small to adults. Especially because adults' perception of portion size has been warped by the culture of dietary excess that is ubiquitous.

If your child is returning from school hungry then it is probably a combination of a) not eating all of their school dinner, perhaps because they don't like it/they let it get cold/they are too busy chatting/playing and b) it has been several hours since they last ate and going for several more hours until dinner is too long!

If lunchtime finishes at 1pm and they have to wait till 6 or 7pm for dinner, it is perfectly NORMAL for them to be hungry in the interim. In fact, your child NOT being peckish 5+ hours after the packed lunch you send suggests that your portions are too much.