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?

This is unfortunately a continual cycle where I work (a university) - complaints that there aren't enough healthy/meat-free options, so they put more in/turn one of the catering outlets into a salad bar etc, then they get dropped after six months because they're not selling enough. Six months after that the calls for more healthy options begins again...

Part of the problem is that one of the reasons that mass catering is often stodgy, carby stuff is that it's much easier to make on a big scale and keep hot. Fresh, vegetable based food is (I think) much nicer but it tends to showcase the quality of its ingredients which is a problem if the budget is small. Cheap salads are really not great and nor can they sit around.

Isn't that interesting and sad. I scheme that had such obvious benefits for children scrapped because adults want the money.

How sad that they stopped the whole scheme instead of just providing one nutritious meal a day.

Short term is - the state paying for lunches

Long term is -
-the state feeding them all meals or educating parents, ( that rarely works).
-However raising taxes on salt, sugar and unhealthy foods such as those that are processed might.
-Along with banning unhealthy additives such as aspartame which other countries have been doing for years.

Lunches alone won’t solve the issue long term.

all the options need to be healthy.

It won't stop the visits to McDonalds and other unhealthy so-called fast food places that are the real cause, along with the proportion of children being brought up in poverty.

That’s fantastic. I’ve read that other countries do this too.

I know.
But you can see, just from this thread alone, all the objections even to the idea of feeding children better. And as for the idea that children will just buy fast food on the way home, well where do they get the money for that? Parents give it to them. As I said, children eat crap food making them fat and unhealthy because adults give it to them. And regarding education, people know already. Who doesn't know that KFC is bad for you and vegetables are good for you? Nobody!

It is good. I remember when I was in school picking litter was a punishment which made us think badly of it. Here its something you do to take pride in your school and its surroundings. Sometimes they go cleaning the forest next to the school too.

Is this a Steiner school

@ODubhshlaine the problem is one persons "healthy" is another persons "evil food".
I've seen on threads about packed lunches on here and people being criticised for giving a perfectly normal lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich followed by a yogurt.

Blimey, ! I just don’t get that.

Again, because myths are still being perpetuated, food isn't always automatically healthier or better for the planet just because it's vegetarian.

Indeed. It's crazy. That's fine, especially if part of an overall balanced diet.

No, its just a normal Finnish school

When I worked in South Korea the school meals were so healthy and varied. But a typical meal would be; always a broth type soup, rice (white or purple), kimchi, a meat/fish/tofu/egg dish and with sides like acorn jelly, marinated quails eggs or nori. They ate it all up because its what they were used to. If UK kids were regularly served a healthy lunch 5x a week, they'd become used to it and eat it.

Exactly, the problem is entirely self made. Although I believe that, due to the industrial revolution, we became more malnourished and removed from the land and growing of good. We became accustomed to beige diets.

I wonder though how long the lunch breaks in Finland/South Korea/France etc are?
Part of our problem is the children are expected to shove it down far to quickly because lunch break is stupidly short.

I was a nanny in Belgium. Took the kids to McDonalds for a 'treat' - they looked down their noses like I'd taken them to a soup kitchen. To them it was crap food, they were right!

Totally. The Swedish school had staggered lunch breaks. Everyone sat down with their teachers. The lunch was part of the school day - educational - not a break from education.

Lunch breaks are short in Finland at least, at my DD's school they get 25 minutes in theory, in practice DD says its about 15/20 minutes to eat but apparently that's enough (it would explain why my bloke eats dinner so quickly, if he had to eat so quickly at school!). That's just eating time though, break times are separate to lunch, so they're not trying to fit anything else in that, and there's two different sittings (one at 10:35 and one at 11:05) so not too much time spent queuing as its a small school.

Definitely lessons to be learnt from across the water then !

@Needmorelego 1 hour in S Korea. And I agree. Some UK schools give just 30 mins

I think one of the best lessons to learn would be the 15 minutes break after every lesson. Means every child gets a proper chance to go to the loo between lessons so less disruptions during class time, and they all get a bit of a brain break and a chance to let off steam every hour which should also lessen disruptions from those children that start to get too fidgety after too long sitting down.

@Needmorelego my kids would get a 2.25hr lunch break in primary. It’s mad, but it fits the French schedule. They would all have time to eat, and the local Marie would provide ‘animateurs’ to run activities the rest of the time - sports, crafts, tech etc.