Horrified by school dinners!

[WillieverlearnQ]

I went to my daughter’s school yesterday for dinner with the parents. All they had was two scoops of mash (my daughter did say that it is usually just one scoop) the thinnest slice of turkey I have ever seen and a tablespoon of carrots with a drizzle of watery gravy. With a tiny pot of ice cream. When I was at school it was nothing like this.

She has been asking for packed lunches for a long time but I’ve always refused. But today and going forward I will always make her a proper lunch.

It just make’s you question what on earth is going on? How can that be a sufficient for a child at school for 6 hours. Also why on earth are parents paying £3 for such a terrible meal.

Not sure they were . Isn’t that also when Margaret Thatcher removed the free school milk ?

Is she hungry because she isn't actually finishing the plate OP? DD wouldn't have touched the majority of it, so would have come home wanting something else. DS would have eaten the lot.
Lunch boxes were a much better choice for us.

I was surprised how large the portions were in the photos after your description. This is the quantity I give my 7 year olds at home. I am quite shocked by the ice-cream though, our school wouldn’t serve that.
At our school the kids can go up for seconds, do you know if they can at yours? Or perhaps your daughter could even if it’s not the usual thing. I can imagine a lot of food would be wasted if the standard portion was larger than the one you have shown.

Those meals look fine? I don’t see the problem. If you’re giving her breakfast and a decent meal in the evening those are more than fine.

Those meals look alright to me, standard school lunches. My 5 year old wouldn't finish, 9yo would probably be getting hungry by the time we got home.

Those meals look fine. As someone else has mentioned the issue is fussy eating and children not eating everything on the plate. That's why many go hungry as most of their lunch goes in the bin.
There is only so much you can do at lunchtime to encourage children to eat more, you can't force them to eat and if you aren't careful some parents will complain if you ask a child to try something they say they don't like.
If you let the teacher know the child isn't eating their lunch they can talk to the parent, but lots still order (especially KS1 because it's free).
Roast dinner day is an excellent example of parents ordering the food for their little ones but them only eating the Yorkshire pudding and possibly a bit of the meat. The veg all goes in the bin, along with potatoes for far too many children.
Even fish finger day isn't a win, with peas going in the bin.

It's probably less processed than the contents of most primary aged packed lunches!

I dont have any experience of school dinners but I think they look like good value for 3 quid.

Oh come on. No they were not! Ours were revolting.

There’s a big variation. DS is four and so his are free and they sound nice from the menu but I don’t know if if is like hospital food and sounds nicer than it is! The ones at the school I work in are mostly fast food style; pasta pots, burgers, nuggets, not great really.

They would do me for lunch tbh! Plenty of food there.

My school dinners at high school were amazing, I don't know how they did it. They were so yummy, would 100% gladly eat today. It wasn't a fee paying school either before anyone asks.

There was always the standard pizza chips burgers etc.

But also a jacket potato bar (done properly in the black braiziers), a really nice salad bar - very fresh, not just mayo full options, pre made (but onsite) sandwiches, a meat and two veg main meal and proper pudding, plus a more contemporary main meal like individual lasagnes, moussaka or chicken pasta bake in ramekins, bean burgers and chicken burgers that were essentially a chicken breast - not reformed, with lettuce and sliced tomato.

Yeah I was in primary through the 80s and survived on grated cheese and grated carrots. And syrup sponge.

Tell DD to look and see if anyone is eating their dinner -I bet they are.
That looks ok to me. Kids are so fussy now - the ones eating it will be the hungry ones.

Tbh it doesn’t look great to me. The portions are OK, but it doesn’t look appetising at all. I wouldn’t especially want to eat it.

Depends on the school. At ours they can usually have seconds eg on roast dinner day there is always more roast potatoes and vegetables available. It’s a small school though and the staff go around the tables offering out more. Appreciate that’s not feasible in a large school set up.
There’s only 68 kids at ours, food cooked on site and it is nice.

Standard portion isn’t enormous but good enough for KS1. I can imagine some Year 5/6 may find it small though. We will move to a mix of lacked lunch and hot meals once we have to pay for it.

They are the best meals the kids will have all year. Because parents were coming in.

I always feel sad when I hear parents saying that they've had a hot meal, so only need a small dinner at home. You are so right, portions can be tiny, especially for the older children who are served later when food tends to run out!

I used to cook/ serve school lunches as cover for the regular staff. I worked for a very large national school catering company, mostly on the admin side, but also was fully trained for the food safety aspect.

It isn’t to last a child for 6 hours. It’s from when they have lunch, until they finish school which is 2-3 hours. Breakfast before school, mid-morning snack at break, lunch and then mine had something small after school to keep them going until their evening meal.

Indeed - I don't think that the mash we used to eat had ever even met a potato. Flakes with water, mystery meat and then packet sponge with either brown, pink or yellow custard. I say brown, pink or yellow because they all tasted the same 'general' flavour.

Those portions look perfectly normal.
As for quality of food, looks exactly like what I had in 90s/00s. Pretty standard slop.

Loved my school dinners as a kid

The original poster clearly says in her post it’s the meagre portions she is worried about. Where has she said anything in her post about fine dining? Did you actually read her post???

They have around £2.53 for each pupil, which needs to pay for ingredients, labour, and equipment. You can't expect more.

Having seen your photos, those meals look absolutely fine to me in terms of quantity.

The quality doesn't look any worse than my primary school dinners, which I remember being horrible (1960s). As others have said, school dinners have never been fine dining so I'm not sure what you expected.

Ice cream? I thought schools weren’t allowed to give junk food anymore?

The rest of it looks fine to me. Meat, veg and a carb. What’s wrong with that?