School dinners v packed lunch

[F05ters1]

Reception age daughter begging to go on packed lunches already after 6 weeks of full time school.

Every day without fail when I ask her what was for lunch I get... fishfingers chips and beans, I didn't like the chips and I'm off beans so I ate the fish fingers. Please can I take a packed lunch?

pasta and cheese, I didn't like the cheese and the pasta was soggy so I just had the biscuit for pudding. when can I go on packed lunch?

mince and dumplings today, mince was too salty and the dumpling was soggy, please can I go on packed lunches?

blah blah takes a packed lunch. (dd has even approached said mum who said her dd was a picky eater 🙄)

why can't you just say I'm a picky eater mum!

For context she'll eat a salmon fillet at home but won't eat a fishfinger.
She'll eat fillet steak but not a burger.
She eats all veg and salad but isn't keen on meat. I make soup packed with lentils and do lots of eggy things for protein

I'm torn. school meals are free and I work shifts, it's been a godsend not having to worry about lunch for the four year old restaurant critic! but she is so adamant, should I relent?

Are you sure its entirely picky eating and not just wanting to sit with a friend to eat lunch? I don't know if times have changed, but when I attended school packed lunch kids got to go eat their dinners ahead of cooked school dinners. For me, this meant that my friends got to go eat and I had to stand bored in a queue and eat with people who weren't my friends. This lead to me skipping meals in school and my mum going bananas that nobody made sure I'd eaten a meal she'd paid for.
When I had a kid myself, I gave her the option what she wanted to do - she was a nightmare to get to bed and a nightmare to wake up in the morning (hmm wonder who she took after :P) I had stuff to do, so anything that could survive outside of the fridge was in her lunch box the night before, I quickly whipped a sandwich and finished the box in the morning with it (not that she always ate a sandwich, sometimes she used to pick out the middle and leave the bread, no matter if I used white bread or rolls!)

That's a really good point @Velvetdragon13 .

Sometimes sandwiches means you can spend your whole lunchtime with your friend. At junior that can mean 2 mins eating 3 bites of your sandwich outside unsupervised, and the rest of the time to play.

The kid sounds like a fussy eater. My school meals were always chips, beans, burgers, sausages, Turkey twizzlers, pizza.. ooh I miss those days. Didn’t do me any harm.. we did used to play a lot of sports and weren’t glued to screens though so easier to burn it all off etc

All that stuff was probably nicer in our day because it was seasoned. Chips used to be a treat.

Kids these days are used to much less salt than we had in those meals, but mine still don't fancy completely salt free chips.

How sad that the school dinners seem to be so horrid, so many children rely on this as their only meal. I wouldn't give in personally but keep trying different foods in the safe environment of your home and perhaps she will become less picky?

We have a jacket potato option but it is lukewarm at best, no butter and a choice of grated mozzarella (cheaper than cheddar) and baked beans. No tuna as it’s too expensive now.
wednesday is roast day but these days that means half a small chicken breast, a couple of tiny roast potatoes and a spoonful of boiled veg. No yorkshire pud or stuffing these days.

I am a school cook...school cooks have to cook what they're told to cook...even if a school becomes an academy the school still cannot have exactly what they want..school meals have to reach government guidelines and at a cost of just over £2 its extremely difficult to balance out, also at that cost you will not get a heaped plate of food. Cooks cannot over produce food either as stock takes are done at end of every month, and this would show in the costings...everybody's hands are tied to be honest.

Agree with you. All such a shame though and could be (and deserves to be) so much better.

Not about calories/weight though, it's about nutrition.
Eating shit food might give you fuel that you subsequently burned off.... but you're fucking up your body by eating crap most days of your childhood.