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.

This Is exactly it.

What is her weight like?

We should absolutely be prioritising better food. In Japan they have very strict rules around school lunches and employ dieticians in schools who teach the children about the importance of nutrition. Elementary school kids eat in class with their teachers, and they take it in turns to announce to the class the ingredients and the nutrition they get from the meal - it's an integral part of the education.

https://www.japanesefoodguide.com/japanese-school-lunch/

I am retired and I can assure you that school dinners were pretty awful in my day as well (1950s and 1960s).
Our primary school dinners were NOT made on the premises and consisted mainly of 1 slice of unidentified roast meat, over boiled cabbage, lumpy mashed potatoes and brown jelly gravy. Certainly not hot.
Frankly I could never finish it. I only ever got the potatoes and cabbage which I hated, but was often made to sit there until I had finished most of it.
It was over 30 years before I could eat cabbage again, and still never eat mashed potato.
At the time I could not understand why they were mashed and why they were lumpy, but I've since realised it was most likely reconstituted powder.
Occasionally, we would have spam fritters.
More occasionally a salad of some sort, made inedible by a smothering of oil or oily fish.
Best time ever was when there was a shortage of potatoes and we were given a bread roll instead.
No choice and definitely no salad bar.
It was several years into secondary school before I could pursuade my parents to let me have a packed lunch, which I prepared myself.

We went to a theme park in Spain a few years ago and paid for a ticket where you got lunch as well. It was incredible, proper tablecloths, cutlery and a lovely buffet lunch. I've never eaten decent food at a UK theme park!

Ireland are better at mid range dining than we are.

We just get ripped off in the UK all the time.

School dinners are always going to be beige, carby, and unappetising - either due to budget constraints (£3 is never going to be gourmet 2 courses) or the reality that many kids are used to beige at home too.

ds's appetite was ridiculous when at school, I think we forget they need more fuel for all the growing they are doing (all skinny 6ft 4in of him - maybe if I fed him less he would be shorter!)

ds would have a huge bowl of porridge with a large banana and glass of milk in the morning at 7am, would take in a large chicken/salad wrap (a full chicken breast) for morning break at 11am as he would never have lasted until "lunch" on packet of crisps like most had.

School dinner were at 1:30pm, they ordered their dinner the day before in the app. Meals were poor so he went for the snack menu (usually a curry chicken panni or chilli chicken/rice snack pot and a tinned fruit salad pot or similar - some days pizza). £2.15 a day (no drink as he preferred water). They were tasty enough he says, but small portions and alone would never have fed him all day.

It is better than what I got with my dinner money when I was at school - cigs sold in singles from the corner shop 🤣

I’m afraid I agree with the others op. That’s a perfectly healthy portion of food for a school age child, If you’re thinking more then you’ve lost sight of what a portion should looo like . I assume she also has breakfast and dinner. As well as her lunch?

Yes they were.

At my school! In the 1980’s.

I agree. The food is abysmal and there isn't much of it. Our school changed providers last year and the new one, Dolce, is awful. Fortunately, my DC doesn't want to eat much at lunchtime. But for hungry kids it'd be very bad (or for kids on free school meals who rely on that meal).

I won't pay for it. It's not worth it. I send in a packed lunch daily. Still costs less than school lunch.

Seems like a pretty normal portion size for a child. How much did you expect her to be eating?

You say she wants packed lunches instead. What would you give her for a packed lunch?

Primary school meals were made in school at my school (70's).We loved them. They even made crisps - which we loved despite being nothing like bought ones🤣
I think those meals look fine OP, but ours were better. Irish stew, yum yum.

At my children’s school the meals are never healthy, it’s all processed crap (normally pizza or some form of processed meat) but what really gets me is that they can serve cake jelly and ice cream 5 days a week but we are not aloud to send home made oat bars because they “contain too much sugar”. The mind boggles

At my children’s primary school they would run out of things by time it got to the year 6s as well, so the biggest children got the least food. My daughter would regularly tell me about her friend who would get upset because she was still really hungry after lunch! We stopped having any school lunches because of it

We have definitely gone backwards where school meals are concerned, in the 70's they were really great, proper hearty meals, real food with fab puddings made in the actual school kitchen. None of this bought in ready made to heat up cardboard rubbish you get these days. They definitely changed for the worse in the 80's didn't they and seem to have got worse from there, it's all so tasteless & bland looking now. I thought they were supposed to be getting overhauled and made better ?

School meals also depend on who is running the kitchen. A friend was a professional chef in a 4* hotel. When her shit of an ex-husband ran off and left her and the kids, hotel hours and cheffing weren't going to work, so she got a job running a school kitchen. She has taught her workers proper chef skills and the meals they serve are great. When she first got there, everything was delivered frozen - her predecessor just opened the bags and bunged it in the oven.

I was at school in the 60s/70s. My mother always said that getting fussed about school lunches was a waste of time because we always had a good dinner in the evening and there was always plenty of food.

I felt the same with my DC although they had packed lunches because they could. The school lunches sounded great but in reality were very carby and often very spicy.

What I do think is a problem vis a vis quality is the commitment to provide free lunches for all infants. If something is free it is very hard to reasonably complain about the quality. Look what happened to the NHS.

@NotEnoughKnittingTime Nothing inherently wrong with ice cream but my kids get so much sugar at home, I like to think this isn't doubled down on at school!

Not at my sink Comprehensive! I didn’t eat lunch for 7 years.

This is (usually) the result of schools using outside catering companies instead of a in
house team. These companies prioritise profits above all else and the food is usually dire. I taught in secondary schools for 15 years and once forgot my lunch so resorted to a school meal…never again! Overpriced, bland, poor quality and I was starving before the end of the day.

Such a shame because when I taught in France for a year…it was a five course feast of deliciousness! And it cost less that what school meals in the UK were at the time!

I think in the 80s, school catering must have varied hugely between education authority areas. My primary school meals arrived daily in big metal trays in a van. And were largely repulsive.

Oily spam fritters, spongy liver and onions, and jugs of bright custard for the table with a thick hard skin on top were particular low lights. Unfortunately one of the dinner ladies lived near me, so would regularly report back to my mother on my refusal to eat anything bar the bread roll. Horrific!

School lunches were pretty poor when I was at school in the 70s and 80s, but so was a lot of home cooking, to be fair! They did seem better than what OP describes, though.

I had similar experience as you, OP, when I went into my kids’ primary school for lunch with parents. I didn’t cave to packed lunches then because I was too exhausted, but also they were free. If I’d been paying £3 I probably would have. I made sure breakfast was substantial and gave them a small tea when they got home instead.

Have recently started making them pack lunches for secondary school, though. They’re 16 now and not fussy eaters, but they just won’t eat what the school serve and having seen it, I don’t blame them.

@34ransum why not cut down on sugar at home.

Most school puddings are sweetened with fruit juice. Cakes etc are not as tasty as caked they have at home

I don't think that looks too bad tbh. As others have said, many people have lost sight of the correct portion sizes for children.

As for my own children, both primary and secondary meals were really good. My DS especially loved school dinners - and if there was any food going spare, the dinner ladies always used to ask him if he wanted seconds! 🤣

But, if your child has a preference for packed lunches then I would just go with that.

I’m just not seeing that!

I’ve seen worse in some pubs. Why do you think it’s slop? It’s not a Michelin tasting menu but it looks wholesome.

Processed turkey slice, a literal scoop of frozen mash, watery “gravy”, a strip of unseasoned chicken that’s so dry it looks like it’ll turn into dust, a mountain of white rice, sweaty microwave veg, cheap sausage, and potato waffles are not remotely wholesome, never mind appetising.

I wouldn’t eat any of it nor feed to it growing kids. I’m really shocked at the low standards of some on this thread.

This is true. The Head Teacher at the school where I worked in London didn't allow packed lunches. The majority of the children were on free school meals and, as it was a small school anyway, the school kitchen wouldn't have been viable if too many opted out.