To think that free breakfast at school is a bad idea due to the quality?

[Mushypeass]

Firstly, I fully agree with the principle of free breakfast for all pupils. My reservation comes from the quality of food that is often served up in UK school canteens. Obviously a poor quality breakfast is better than no breakfast at all but AIBU that it could encourage children to eat even more UPFs? For example, children who have may had a relatively healthy breakfast at home may now opt eat UPFs at school with their pals instead.

Seocondly, why is the food so poor in so many schools? How can other countries manage to provide their youth with nutritious and healthy meals but we can’t?

Im Not a complete asshole, I know families where the kids don't get breakfast and I've tried helping giving them uniforms which were turned grey/brown within a couple of weeks and trying to help them get rid of headlice (which came back within a couple weeks). None of those families were getting their kids to school on time for lessons let alone earlier for a breakfast club. I'm not being an asshole I just don't think it will make a difference.
And because I've been pretty much the brokest you can be in this country having no job and being under 25 I can't bring myself to buy the excuse they can't afford 70p cereal. Even the unemployed older ones get way more money than I did just because they're older and they still try to say they can't afford breakfast cereal? Priorities aren't right

Why do you keep repeating the same thing to me?! You’re repeating yourself over and over that you were under 25 etc etc and I haven’t at any point said that is an excuse? I don’t get your point? I’m not engaging with you anymore because I don’t think you’re reading anything I’ve said!! I support free breakfast clubs, end of.

Because on this website people don't read all your comments and if you don't repeat yourself in every comment someone will come along and bring up some point you've already addressed 😂

Sorry nothing personal to you, Im Not completely opposed to breakfast club I just don't think it will solve the issue of kids not eating breakfast because all the families I know who don't give their kids breakfast aren't getting to the school on time for lessons let alone a breakfast club

The breakfast club at my kids school is toast, cereal, fruit and yoghurt, not great but not terrible and it's a deprived area- problem is just now, before it becomes free, for working parents it costs £2.50 a day which is a lot for toast or cereat.

I bet lots of children end up having two breakfast, and putting on weight. There should be some sort of opt in so if your names not on the list you don’t get it

They didn’t have breakfast clubs when I was a child, shame because along with there being no sanitary products in my childhood haven there was also no bloody food.. Do you know how many children in this country would love a couple of slices of jam on toast in the morning. They maybe crap but my shitty free school dinner was sometimes the only meal I got, this was the 80s but unfortunately I think there’s still a big chunk of children still living like this.

That is because you seem to imagine up things that will not work as if schools are too dumb to have thought about it and then along you come to save the day because they cannot have logical thought processes can they. Or is it that they have had logical thought processes but still have found it a bloody nightmare to work around and it pisses them off when along comes someone who says 'just.....' as if it is that simple. Many schools have spent hours trying to figure out a way to make it work. Many are still working on that.

I agree with the fact it should be parents feeding but many have learnt helplessness these days and that needs to change.

The problem does apply but when you have fresh things that go off in 2 or 3 days that are expensive vs things that will keep that are cheaper I know which the school will work with.

I'm not making any food for the kids it isn't my job as I am usually busy prepping for the day around the breakfast club and trying to clean my classroom in 1 minute before the day starts. Not sure if you have ever left porridge or weetabix in a bowl. You could build houses with those things if you wanted to! I don't eat breakfast as I do not have time as kids in school are more important than staff having breakfast so nope not made any porridge in about 20 years! That is another argument that while staff are doing everything for the kids they are prevented from looking after their own basic needs but hey I am sure you will have a solution to that too.

Crack on turning your phone off. I could tell you how you could make your job less stressful if you just.....think logically!

This! And then follow it up with 'just some logical thinking' as if bloody schools are not thinking of how to manage things. It is infuriating.

Granted it was many years ago now, but all the kids I taught in France had Nutella eaten straight from the jar for breakfast. Sometimes with a croissant or similar.

Always think this when I see the ‘French kids dont eat junk’ stuff on here.

The ones I taught absolutely did, they ate a lot of it. They also went home for lunch where, by their own account, a lot more junk was consumed although granted the food available at the university canteen where we could also eat as student teachers was pretty great. Presumably location/ socio-economic demographics played into this as they do here in the UK, I was in a ZEP.

Also spent lots of time in Spanish schools/ living with a Spanish family. Breakfast there was usually cake and nesquick too. Lunch (at home after school day finished at 2) and dinner (usually about 10pm earliest) were pretty great though, but plenty of junk in between.

Breakfast club at the school I work at (we're in Scotland) offer:
Weetabix or porridge
Wholemeal toast with spread or jam
Fruit (usually apple, satsuma or banana)
Yoghurt
Sometimes have bagels or pancakes.

Ours is £3.50 a day and it is toast, cereal or bagels. No fruit or yogurt. It's a deprived area too.

I completely agree, OP. Taxes in the UK are incredibly high, if they were managed appropriately, kids wouldn’t need to settle for crappy UPF breakfasts. And they are crappy. White bread, margarine and cheap jam?! Why do we put up with this? Places like Japan have dedicated nutritionists in each school making sure children have proper, healthy meals.

Free breakfast is nice but it must be nutritious. These children are our future. We need to teach healthy eating habits and nourish them properly so they can grow up healthy. We need to think long-term. If we don’t, we will end up with obese, unhealthy adults suffering with chronic diseases. Also, they’ll be putting pressure on the NHS so if it’s all about the bottom line, it’ll cost us all more in the end.

It’s a damning indictment on society if advocating for nutritious, non-UPF meals is seen as snobby and privileged…

Not on mumsnet. If you can’t provide hand crafted organic muesli and a selection of freshly made organic fruit salad on bone china its better to let them starve.

The primaries around our way lost their kitchens in the early 90’s when central school meals services were abandoned in favour of government prescribed outsourcing to the lowest common denominator firms who provided poor quality (often inedible) packed lunches for FSM children and the rest brought in their own lunches. Kitchens were repurposed as more classroom space for the rising numbers with less cost than building work.

When your “equipment” is a hall, a couple of toasters and the sink which the staff use for tea and coffee and the good will of staff giving free time your options are limited. Never managed to cook porridge in a toaster myself and anyone who thinks its as easy to wash a dried on, half left porridge bowl as a toast plate hasn’t done much washing up.

Most of the shoestring breakfast clubs do manage wholemeal toast (but standard sliced so obviously not approved wholemeal) with some jam or marmite, some cereals based on availability. What they all have in common is shelflife and minimal waste plus the children actually eat it. That last being the point.

In principle I’d pay taxes to have better breakfasts provided in schools - the problem is as soon as its “free” any comments about quality are shut down because is “free”. Possibly subsidising with some payment is a compromise option.

Honestly what a sanctimonious post that shows no understanding of the constraints of staffing, the pace of the curriculum the government set and the size of classes

OK dole out the pre-packaged shit and cartons of fruit juice.

plus the children actually eat it

You can’t just impose a whole new culture of food on children and expect them to eat it - porridge, wholemeal sourdough, avocado, fruit etc (nut-butters of any description are out for allergy reasons) is a whole different culture of food for many deprived children. And I am not talking about immigrant communities for whom breakfast foods will be different again.

I think school food is awful because most schools now employ outside caterers who are only interested in making a profit.

The first school I worked at employed their own kitchen staff. It wasn't gourmet cuisine but pupils were served generous portions of proper food with plates and cutlery.

School caterers serve tiny portions, no where near enough for a 16 year old lad and of really really poor food. And for higher prices. The food in my current school is atrocious..the portion sizes are scandalous.

Yep.

Plenty of children at my child's school would have never tried avocado before, probably not even know what it is. That's just the reality at the majority of schools in deprived areas.

Cereal and toast is cheap, familiar, easy to serve and guaranteed that children will eat it.

If it’s that or hungry children then I absolutely will. You continue to look down your nose and sneer…

On Mumsnet, fat kids are far worse than starving ones 🙄

This!

If it’s that or hungry children then I absolutely will. You continue to look down your nose and sneer

No sneering from me. I want better for children in the UK. I want them to have what my DD has.

Most people do feed their children - often at the expense of other essentials including feeding themselves. If free breakfast/lunch makes money available for other things that’s good for families who don’t have spare money. Not sure that ‘I fed my kids’ is really an argument! Yes we all feed our children, some at greater sacrifice than others.

Sadly, a lot of the parents of very deprived kids won't bother getting them up earlier.

The breakfast clubs will be used by parents quite capable of giving their kids breakfast, but they can't be bothered because they'd rather fob the cost and responsibility onto the school.

It is a complete mystery to me why people fall for every food fad going and seem to think it is the definitive way of eating .
This year's buzz word is UPF - posters are throwing it around, presumably because they think it makes them sound as if they know what they are talking about.
It doesn't, it makes the sound as if they are just jumping on the latest bandwagon and will stay there until the next one comes along.
A few years ago, sugar was the evil everyone was obsessed with, before that it was fat, now it's UPFs.
None of the above are good, obviously but they really are not the be all and end all of life.
Proportion needed I think