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?

Managing and punishing “the feckless poor” is not the job of schools. Its also not just “the poor” who act fecklessly when raising and feeding their DC.

Breakfast clubs started to address the practical problem of kids arriving unfed. That is all.

Yeah, thanks for clarifying that(!)

Pp has been very judgemental of other people's parenting on this thread. Rightly so in the case of parents who neglect/do not bother to feed their children, obviously, but they appear (to me anyway) unwilling to address the question of whether a defenceless hungry child should be left hungry because their parents are feckless.

Whilst I am actually not thick and am capable of understanding that sometimes parents require breakfast to be 'outsourced' so to speak (work start times clashing with breakfast time etc), what I was trying to point out was that circumstances can look different from the outside looking in and people shouldn't judge when they don't have the full facts. Pp appears to believe every case of child poverty in this country is down to parental fecklessness. That's simply not the case.

I think some felt stigmatised by using them, such a shame.

My DC are adult but I remember there was a child at their school who didn't get much (if any) food at home. He was always given a quick breakfast and a large lunch at school, though it was long before breakfast clubs and free meals.

Covid proved that young mothers not having access to social groups is detrimental for mother’s and babies’ mental health and development.

Local libraries, playgroups, weighing in clinics, GPs are meant to be open to deal with some of what SureStart did, but can be scattered all over and harder to access. The whole point of SureStart was that is was easier to access and go just there. The organised NCT mum is of course OK to find it all. The teen mum from a deprived background less so.
When I went to SureStart with my older children in London we also got handed books and all sorts of other information, as well as early speech and language advice/weighing in, 1 and 2 year checks. It was a real community hub and meant people from different backgrounds did mix. When I pop into the local library these days (which is lovely actually and we are very lucky, as well as the local playgroups in churches/community centres) there simply are not enough poorer people attending or from immigrant backgrounds. It is very obvious indeed.

I , and the kids, really like porridge which is cheap, easy and good fibre. Love a boiled egg, toast, crumpets, crumpets, cereal, fruit, yoghurt. All relatively cheap and largely what the majority of the country has of a morning on the way out the door.

Its not perfect but few things in life are ideal I’d think it was good enough.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies estimates for every £1 spent on Sure Start centres, the financial savings long term were £2.05:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/may/22/sure-start-centres-saved-uk-government-2-for-every-1-spent-study-finds

The mainstream politicians mainly don’t care about ordinary people. They want to shrink the welfare state. It’s all ideological!

Presumable that is based on nothing replacing surestart centres? Surestart centres were never a thing in Scotland - it was decided to spend the money in other ways directed more to deprived communities. No idea if that was financially more beneficial than surestart centres or not.

I guess so, because I am not aware of anything replacing them in England on the same scale?

My most local one was once on the news and they panned around to show the carpark. Full of bmws, mercs. Audis. people, like me, drove to use them. Most of the people I met there were educated / professionals. My neighbour and I used to drive to different ones to do different classes.

There was no stigma. The target market in the surrounding areas didn’t even have curtains open before lunch time.

Just like with providing breakfast, the issue is not a lack of money or a lack of opportunity. It is culture and a lack of parenting skills.

The Sure Start Centres I used to go to where all in primary schools with attached preschools catering to a challenging demographic. They were deliberately placed right there so that local parents would go from the start. The whole idea is to develop health and education right from birth (ideally even before that), for those who need it most. That is literally the whole point of it. If you never had a parent who fed you properly or talked or read to you and you do not have that great innate gift of knowing how to parent properly, because you were never parented properly yourself. Of course the main problem these days for most poor people is insecure housing and not actually being able to stay in one place with their kids long term and having a supportive local community.

My concern, although I am not a dietitian, is that when we saw a feature on this in the news, the children were being given toast and jam. Wouldn’t that be quickly digested, as it’s high GI and all sugar, causing a sugar rush and then a crash quite quickly mid morning? Cereal and milk aren’t a complete meal either?

I thought it was protein that fills you up? So, wouldn’t the children be better off, being given a balanced meal - like eggs, fruit/veg, baked beans or a lower GI carbohydrate, to keep them going until lunchtime?

This country needs to have a non scare mongering conversation about ultra processed foods.
Under the NOVA system which is currently used even harvesting of grain counts as a process.
Also while it is lovely that companies such as M+S are releasing their single grain no process cereal you have to recognise why fortified cereal came about. Yes it is more processed but it was addressing people with low incomes who needed vitamins in their food.
UFP is not all chicken nuggets
We need to have a sensible debate on what is UFP and possibly re define it from NOVA.
We do not want the poorer members of our society unable to access nutritional food (even supplemented) because the richer members of our society are stressing about UPF
Do not starve the poor due to a principle

These places still exist though? I live down the road from one, they're not necessarily aimed at feckless parents the one near here had a lot of baby groups for under 18 mums that was always busy when I used to take my eldest. I think they also have groups for parents of disabled children which I've heard are well used.
I don't think it's true when people on here say they all closed or the groups weren't used by the target audience

where I live the buildings still exist but have Been repurposed dome still have midwife ,children's clinics etc but i don't think it's the same role as sure start.

Apparently the mass closing happened in 2010 I was only 9 then so have no idea what they were like at their peak but when I was taking my eldest to baby class 8 years ago it was always very busy with different things going on. Still seems that way now from what I hear

A lot of poorer families don’t travel far. They stay tight to their community and won’t even go a mile across town even with public transport. This can seriously restrict their food choices - foods like fresh fruit and veg are generally more expensive, lower quality and less choice in convenience stores and local supermarkets. If you have a low budget then you are looking to buy calories not nutrition with your money which means UPF, convenience foods, basic carbohydrates. Turning the oven on is also expensive. And when you apply these available food choices across generations it is not surprising that you end up with children and their adults having poor diets.

Just to add to this.

You have £1 left at the end of the week. You want to buy a treat for your children. Apples cost £0.50 each, A punnet of plums costs £1.30 so you can't afford them.

Or you could get a packet or two of biscuits.

Sorry posted too soon, which would you buy?

What makes you think children need protein for breakfast? Children in the UK are on average getting more than enough protein in their diets to meet their requirements (based on the National Diet and Nutrition Survey data). The trend, and it is a trend, for low carb high protein diets is not an appropriate, safe or healthy way to feed children.

I am a dietitian. Please see my previous post explaining how cereal, milk and fruit meets children's nutritional requirements. High protein diets are not appropriate for children, they are often misunderstood, badly executed and an expensive fad.

Bearing in mind that I see no issue in hungry children having fortified cereals, milk and foods they will actually eat being provided from them, I am somewhat sceptical of blanket conclusions being reached on the basis of the small numbers of the selected children - the ones whose parents completed the questionnaires for four separate days, made themselves available for field visits and rarely consented to blood tests (17% of the children in total), saying that children get more than enough protein in their diets, particularly when taking into account the lowest socioeconomic groups needed to be able to respond online/occupy secure housing to be able to be followed up/etc.

They need a balanced breakfast, which in an ideal world would include protein. I am by no means suggesting a low carb diet.

Lol at the suggestion schools teach children how to make their own yoghurt. The parents who can’t be bothered to fed their children aren’t going to have the ingredients in or encourage making from scratch.

There is protein in the milk on their cereal, add some fruit or fruit juice and it seems balanced.

We used to do it at playgroup. They made their own butter, helped make bread and also yogurt. Your own fresh butter on bread you helped bake was loved by the kids. Make yogurt and next session they could add fruit or honey. It was a popular activity not every week but from time to time. I think some mums were also fascinated.