Would giving all children free school meals actually safe the public purse money long term?

[Kendodd]

Really good quality, highly nutritional, tailored to children's needs and vegetarian. I know this would cost a lot, but if it improves the nations health long term, would it actually cost less?

Yanbu - it would safe money.
Yabu - it would not save money.

Well one problem that I don't know how you get round is children actually eating them. The amount of food that children chuck from their school dinners every day is enormous - even children who almost certainly are fed very poorly at home. The food needs to be consumed for it to have any impact at all and at present a lot of it isn't.

Absolute waste of time and money imo

whilst I largely agree with your principle of ‘invest to save’

Parents should be responsible for feeding their children proper nutritional meals. I do. I don’t understand why it would be acceptable to not.

This is just another example of people having more kids than they can afford and the state having to pick up the pieces.

If it could be funded and implemented properly, I would have no issue ensuring that every child has at least one nutritious meal a day. Especially as the level for FSM is so low but cost of living has changed meaning a lot of more families are living closer to the breadline.

Absolutely not.

Help should be targetted to the families who need it the most. Vouchers for food in school holidays or cooking/nutrition lessons, or whatever other help they need to feed their kids a decent balanced diet. Families like those at our school who are 95% middle class professionals with a good level of income do not "need" free school meals. Most will happily take it as a freebie but that is doing zilch to address the needs of deprived kids.

Yabu for saying vegetarian

Why automatically vegetarian? Meat can be healthy as part of a balanced diet.

Yes and "vegetarian" is irrelevant.

This is just another example of people having more kids than they can afford and the state having to pick up the pieces.

who is having more dc then they can afford?

My dc get fsm as many universally do in London.

Better to invest in dc imo

You’re using school dinners as part of a social programming experiment? Why do they have to be vegetarian? Do the kids not get a choice?

Yes I think all school children should have a free, nutritionally complete meal. It might not help the obesity crisis due to eating at home, but it would at least help to prevent deficiencies and ensure those who aren’t properly fed at home have a decent meal. It’s very much the norm in other European countries, I spent some time at a school in France and the lunch was amazing - salad bar, a proper healthy main meal, bread sides and water.

The secondary school pupils I work with do eat the meals. However they tend to choose pizza, chips, baguettes, sausage rolls so nutritionally not great. They are generally starving by break time and tend to eat then as many of them don’t eat breakfast at home.

In principle I think it’s a good idea but I’m not sure ‘highly nutritional’ meals would be so popular.

Yes to everything but they obviously shouldn't be all vegetarian!! No idea why you added that to the end! It certainly would make them a lot less nutritious!

It won't be healthy or nutritious though, it will be cheap and nasty and poorly cooked.
It definitely should not be vegetarian as children cannot get all their essential amino acids from a vegetarian diet and meat substitutes are processed crap.

I'd be in favour of it but I don't see how it would save money.

Kids can and do choose the more unhealthy options.

I certainly wouldn't bother for teenagers. They don't want and won't eat healthy food.

The vegetarian aspect in OP's suggestion is probably to increase the amount of fresh food/fibre/vitamins school children are eating - so that one vegetarian meal a day contributes to a more balanced diet overall. Closer to the 5 or 7 fruit/veg a day most people are currently not achieving. Not to convert anyone to vegetarianism!

May also be cheaper as well.

I had a huge issue with the system when my kids were at Primary and got free meals in Scotland where there are free lunches for all kids in P1-P5 (first 5 years of primary, up to about age 10).

The quality was poor, and the quantity of food was tiny. Same amount given to a 4.5 year old as a 12 year old. It certainly wasn't good enough as a "main meal" for a child who wasn't eating properly at home, fine as a smaller lunch for the kids who were coming home to a warm house and a cooked meal.

No, and I don't agree with universal infant meals - help should be targetted at those in need across all ages with a higher income threshold

Have you actually seen school meals?
Have you seen how much waste there is and how little some kids will eat?
My ds would not eat the free meals when in ks1, and to be fair I don’t think I would have either. There was nothing decent about them. Even my very unfussy dd rejected them because they were so awful.
I agree that many families could do with help, kids need to be fed and there are some desperate situations going on in the country right now. I don’t think that given the current state of school meals, this is going to be the way to help them though.
Also. Hard no to the vegetarian bit. Guaranteed way to put yet more food in the bin. Kids need choice and meat forms part of that.

I know of a situation where the 'free' year groups went first, often had seconds, and by the time the older 'non-free' year groups got to the dining hall there was actually not enough left to feed them. 10-12 year old children needed bigger portions to start with, not the dregs of what the 4-9 year old children didn't eat.

First sort out the shit they’re being served. It’s pizza, chips, baguettes etc. Tbf any healthier and the kids wouldn’t eat it. Bit nanny state so YABU.

If you believe what you read, parents are feeding their children nutritionally wholesome foods, with fruit and vegetables aplenty and vegetable sticks as snacks. In an actual secondary school, it’s as a PP has said, carb heavy snack foods usually.

In primary schools, there are quite a proportion of children who don’t appear to regularly eat knife and fork meals. So, you can provide the most nutritious and cost effective meals, but you can’t make them eat them.

Oh and my dd is anemic, we were advised red meat was essential as she wasn't absorbing iron easily and it's harder to absorb from vegetables than meat! Oh and many children don't like vegetables, a good beef cottage pie is far better than filling with low calorie vegetables for growing kids

I would rather they improved the quality of the existing offer.