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?

Well no, as he's not fat (75th centile for weight and height, always has been since birth) he's obviously burning all of these calories. I haven't trained him to eat loads and then magically hide the calories somewhere hmm

You do know that overfed children grow taller, not just chubbier?

Op - never post what you feed your child in MN. Posters will focus on that and criticise anything you feed them, regardless of what you put.

I teach in infants and yes, the portions are fairly small. Reception children get the same as year 2, little acknowledgement in the differing ages.

There is still a lot of waste.

However, pre covid I would occasionally eat some of the food - staff get bigger portions and pay more too.

During covid the food options have declined hugely here. To such an extent we, as a school, have made mainly complaints to the company providing them. I am not surprised we currently have so much waste and I can imagine some children go home pretty hungry as a result.

@QuarantineQueen

I teach in a secondary school and discovered the catering staff were giving the girls tiny portions (as in, a tablespoon of pasta for a 16 year old) but the boys full portions. They pay the same... I hit the roof.

That is disgraceful! Appalling sexism.

I'd say it's fairly impossible for a young child to eat too much good food. At lunch time a 5 year old should eat as much potato, vegetables, wholemeal bread as they want.

The obesity epidemic is purely down to:

A) processed foods (huge sugar,
Salt content, and low overall nutritional value leading to increased need of sugar break pick me ups + feeling not that good)

B) sugar snack obsessed culture: coke, biscuits, sweets, cakes, sugar in tea,

C) people not moving, increasingly including kids.

Ok, but he's not particularly tall or heavy. Actually just checked his Bmi on the nhs website and I was wrong, he's 58th centile at the moment. He's 116cm tall and 3st 5lb (sorry for the mixed metrics!). Visually he looks quite muscly and a bit bony (can see ribs, spine, pointy knees and elbows). Does that help?

I reckon it must differ from school to school, I work in the kitchen at my sons school and I think our portions are ok - plus we do give bigger portions to year 5/6 to the younger ones. School catering done by lots of different catering companies and I guess some will be better than others.

I’ve got a 7 year old like yours, always hungry - he’s no fatter than my 9 year old who barely eats anything.

The packed lunch sounds enormous, tbh. School lunches, on the other hand, are a reasonable size only if you eat the lot, and very few children do, especially at age 4/5 - more than half of the food seems to end up in the bin. Does your ds go to after school clubs too, OP? Because if not, it seems odd to me you would not be expecting to give him a reasonable snack when he gets home, anyway. Freshly prepared food when you get home is infinitely nicer than food that was prepared early that morning and has then hung around in a school bag all day going dry/getting slimy/gently warming up, and infinitely nicer than the average school dinner, too. An actual meal-sized snack on getting home, on the other hand, indicates your child feels the need to have more than 3 meals a day, as he is clearly not eating nothing at school (unless the clean plate award is because he’s sneaking off with an empty plate and pretending he’s eaten off it!).

I would say the issue here is that he is used to having massive portions rather than the school meal being too small.

I worked in a school kitchen for a while and the portion sizes were tiny. Both of my children were very slim and one was monitored at school for her size because she was on the small side. Just wanted to say that so that people don't think my idea of a decent portion was skewed.

I think so many children are overfed that school meals seem all

Think of cereal variety pack portions compared to what you actually pour out.

I see children being given piles of food as parents think they need feeding more than they do and it develops a big appetite.

If I ask parents of their child eats well it's really interesting to see which parents interpret that as quantity verses those that respond to the quality of nutrition be in their child's diet. In British cture eating well translates as eating lots. E.g. "You are a good boy eating all you dinner..."

Children should stop when they have had enough not be made to clear the plate and not given a snack every time they are hungry.
I find it phenomenal how many mums carry a bag of snacks around for children and feed children in pushchairs. they don't need constantly feeding.

We also feed kids in front of the TV ( or iPad ) so they don't register what they eat and over eat and this sets a precedent for how much they think they need.

My 5 and 7 year olds take a packed lunch every day to school (not Uk) and that does sound like a lot of food.

But also, is your son just one of those kids who does most of his eating at lunch? I have one who does most of her eating at breakfast, another who barely eats breakfast but always eats all her lunch and dinner and another who doesn’t eat much at lunch but eats a lot at dinner.

Honestly what would worry me the most is school handing out clean plate award. That is just not healthy. It doesn’t teach kids to stop eating when they’re full

RE a big slab of cake for reception children

I don't think kids should be offered big pudding/desert for school dinner as a matter of course. Most cultures don't do the "gorge on a big bowl of sweet food thing after every lunch and dinner" . It's one part of Britain's poor food culture which is the main reason we're such a fat nation. A small yoghurt or bowl of fruit is fine.

You expect him to eat lunch and nothing else until dinner? My DC. always had an after school snack as it can be 4/5 hour gap.

@LemonRoses

I’d be tempted to weigh and accurately calorie count what he is having. It’s a lot unless it is half his intake for the day.

The circa seven hundred calories is based on quite small portions (two or three breadsticks and about ten grapes).

Please don't start weighting and calorie counting for your child. What a way to set a child up for the future!

I see primary school meals daily. They are portioned for key stage 1 and 2 and I’d say they’re adequate. A roast dinner is a small chicken breast size, 3/4 small roast potatoes, carrots and cabbage, a tbsp stuffing and gravy. Then a pudding of either, jelly, yoghurt or a small piece of cake. Fruit always an option. Another day might be pasta bolognaise with a piece of garlic bread. I think the main issue is children not likings the food and leaving it. It’s not as they have it at home so even though parents choose the meal from the menu, they don’t like it.

What time is 'dinner'?

He may just need to have his supper when he gets home from school. He doesn't need another meal after that.

I will also add that the school cook was a terrible cook. We had to do buffet type meals for the teachers sometimes. One of the dishes would be plain boiled pasta with no seasoning, flavouring or sauces. Just plain overcooked stodgy pasta. The rest wasn't much better. I don't know what the teachers thought, but the cook in me was appalled.

TA here. Portions are very small, and in our school they are the same size for all kids. So P1s get the same at P7s. Never enough for seconds for the bigger kids. But agree with the posts about food waste and the need to cajole kids into eating. There's not enough staff nor time to individually monitor and encourage clean plates.

In my experience most 5 year olds (at the school where I work) barely touch the school dinner. At least 50% of what they’re being given get thrown away.
And the requirement for it to be healthy and balanced mean that large portions of mash and custard are not on the menu! Also remember that you were a child at the time so the portions may not be what you remember them being!

OP your son sounds healthy, strong and thriving. Any thread on MN about food brings out the competitive under-eaters, and while it’s sad and worrying to see those attitudes applied to children as well as adults, it’s absolutely no reflection on your son.

My kids usually have school dinner.

My DS would have eaten a similar packed lunch at 5, and has always come out of school ravenous. I remember his reception teacher telling me she'd never seen a 5 year old pile their plate so high from the salad bar, and he always cleared his plate. But I think his appetite is at the higher end.

My DD (currently 5) would typically eat half a sandwich, a piece of fruit and a yogurt or cheese string for a packed lunch. I don't think she always finishes her school dinner.

OP do you know if he is actually eating all of his lunch?

Many kids at school don't, that could be the issue rather than there not being enough.

My children are entitled to fsm but I have started sending them with packed lunches because they both started to complain about being hungry at school in the afternoon.

My daughter is just going into Yr6 and she says even if she eats all of it she's still hungry in the afternoon lessons.

When I spoke to another parent about it she said she had to do the same for her son because he was always hungry at school and he said Yr6 get the same as the infants and its tiny.
I don't know if that is true though.

My 5 year old is always ravenous when she gets home from school. I'm not sure if she clears her plate - I think the limited time to eat, plus the distraction of friends and the eagerness to go and play do all affect how much is eaten.

I always give her a snack of bread and butter, grapes and a dairylea triangle when she gets home!!

It depends on the school. My DD started out at a school where she always came out starving at 3.30 pm - but since she moved to a different school the following year, she just has a normal small snack and doesn't seem ravenous any more. I'm pretty sure the portions were inadequate at the first school and I wish I'd said something!