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?

I work in a school kitchen @F05ters1 and sadly if you think a school dinner is a nutritious filling option you should probably think again. Our cook does her very best with the ingredients provided (lots of it is made from scratch each day) but it’s not particularly appetising, portions are small and the options available aren’t great. School dinners are all about profit these days and it’s very different from the school dinner i remember having as a child.

Yeah tell the school she's too middle class for their meals and send her in with frozen sandwiches instead. I'm sure they'll understand where you're coming from.

Those are all regular meals on our (private) school’s lunch menu. The curry and chilli are mild. DD likes them. Most kids have a hot lunch so I presume the others do too, and we have to pay £5 a day for it, as the free meals are only in state schools, so no one would be paying if their kids weren’t eating it!

OP the food sounds shit. Unless funds are really tight I would just let her have a packed lunch. The food isn’t adventurous or healthy enough to be encouraging her to eat it if she doesn’t like it. Also it really isn’t that much effort to make an extra portion of dinner the night before if it’s something suitable eg pasta and to do a quick sandwich when it isn’t.

Mine does.

I noticed with my DD and with her cousins, when they were her age, that those who have food allergies or intolerances are the ones who would tend to eat everything they could. Those who didn't have them were the ones who refused to eat meat.

DS is 22 and didn't have the option of school dinners until secondary school ( and then he always bought a sandwich or panini). It really isn't a big drama to make a packed lunch. I wouldn't want to be forced to eat something I disliked ( or eat nothing) and so I personally wouldn't force my child to.

Just give her a packed lunch - I would not wanting to be creating any issues with 'forcing' her to get school meals she evidently doesnt like.

My daughter is the same - takes a packed lunch as she doesnt like dinner school meals and tbh I don't blame her, I would rather suck up the cost and time to make sure she had something she would eat than see her hungry and miserable everyday.

My son used to get the school dinners but they've had a few staff issues and now the meals are prepared off site and delivered to the school and he started to complain the new food was horrible. He eventually just stopped eating anything at school altogether so I've had to give him packed lunches.

Iv1ould switch to packed lunches. Surely the best thing for her is to be eating something nutritious at lunchtime.

We swapped dd to packed lunches. The schools used to be ok but they really went down hill.

She came out of school starving most days.

We do a mixture of sandwiches and wraps and then some days she takes hot pasta in a thermos flask.

She is definitely much happier.

our school dinners are grim tbh. I work there and am far from a fussy eater but I wouldn't eat any of it. My DD will eat anything at home, wide range of veg and a varied diet. But school food is just so rank. It is made (like everything in education) on an absolute shoestring budget and mass produced so the quality just isn't there. Thankfully our school do jacket potatoes which are altogether more palatable so my DD tends to eat these...a lot! Even her teacher joked she would turn into a jacket potato!!

Secondary meals aren't served as meals. They are served as individual items of which the children can select and purchase as few or as many as they wish, including having exactly the same food every single day if they want to. As such, whilst individual items may have guidelines, the overall meals the children take at the end are not nutritionally balanced.

Mine will be saddled with school dinners until they are old enough to do their own shopping and make their own packed lunches, if they want to. I have enough to do and I don't need one more task every day. Mine periodically go through periods of asking for packed lunch. I think it's because they are hoping for the packed lunch of school holidays - which is heavy on crisps, biscuits, treats. Not a sandwich and fruit that I'd need to make them for a school packed lunch (no different than the sandwich and fruit they could choose for school dinner, and is probably tastier than mine, and comes with an actual pudding!).

I've told my one in Y6 that she can choose to take a packed lunch in secondary school if she wishes, on the condition she does the shopping with me and makes it herself. I suspect she'll be won over the secondary school lunch offerings instead. But realistically, I can hardly get her to remember her coat for school every day. There's no way she'd manage a packed lunch, and then I'd end up doing it, otherwise she'd have no lunch (they need to be pre-ordered a week in advance).

I'm really surprised anyone pays for school dinners, especially those with children in year 5 / 6. They're really expensive considering how tiny the portions are.

Agreed, the portions for KS2 kids are definitely not enough! Not to mention in many schools a lot of the food has actually run out by the time the older kids get into the dinner hall so they have not only miniscule portions but also the least amount of choice.

Frozen sandwiches are really ok, not sure why it's so pearl clutching and eating leftovers are ok too 🙄. Some of us work long hours and don't have much money so actually need to be careful with things. Those of you who can throw out a portion of chilli then go ahead but both mine like taking leftovers in a food flask to school 🤷🏼‍♀️.

Like others have said see if there is a choice. The jacket potatoes and salad at our school is lovely!

Do packed lunch ch and school
Dinner ch sit apart. Is the reason that she wants to sit next to her friend?

I would give her packed lunches, my DD started with school dinners but the quality was awful. She would have been happy eating their ham wraps everyday but those mass produced wraps are also full of rubbish. She mainly has left overs from dinner for lunch in a flask.

Can't you do a mixture of school dinners and packed lunches? Our school dinners aren't free, but I'd much rather pay for school dinners than make 2 packed lunches every day. Mine look at the menu at the weekend and pick which days they're having school dinners and I do packed lunches on the other days.

Indeed - and add in that in EY and KS1, they often get milk and a snack mid-morning (in some schools, free access to fruit all day, etc). Some children end up being not that hungry at lunchtime as a result and additionally, EY and KS1 children are often sent to lunch at a ridiculously early time. (I used until July this year to visit schools and can't count the number of times I've gone through the hall and seen small children sitting down for lunch at 11.30am.)

I didn't even know you could freeze sandwiches? I'd have thought the butter and filling a might go a bit weird, like if you froze a cheese sandwich would it not be crumbly when it defrosted?

@GlitteryGreen honestly it's absolutely fine and really good in the summer as actually keep the bread fresh for longer.

We don't do it all the time but my daughter sometimes likes ham so a pack would be thrown out before we've used it up so this way we don't waste any.

I get some people don't like it but not sure why some posters have to look down their noses at something that works for someone else (and they've never tried before).

Of course you can't put in stuff like cucumber or lettuce etc.

I don’t know why people are freezing sandwiches.

I make up 5 lunches on Sunday with everything except the sandwich. The sandwich takes about 30 seconds.

I freeze the drink as a cold pack. I get out the night before so it starts thawing otherwise it’s still too solid by lunch if you have a well insulated lunch bag.

Why? My Dad did it for me, it was fine.

No, it's fine, it's just a sandwich. Only slightly crunchy if you try and eat it too soon and it's not defrosted 😂

Behave yourself. It's fine.

Unless the food tastes awful in the first place (down to the chef) it will taste fine defrosted and heated up.