To think that Jamie Oliver is right...

[Easywriter]

Shoot me down should you care to but I don't want my children to eat rubbish.

I'm not obsessed by my childrens diet but I want them to eat fresh, wholesome, nutritious food in the correct quantities.

The Government should stand behind Jamie Oliver in his quest to ensure that school meals are of a decent standard.

For some children it may be the only decent meal they eat in a day, for others it will be continuing what is standard in their homes.

If mothers want to feed their children hamburgers through school railings then they deserve to be preached to about healthy eating to within an inch of their lives. Being stupid yourself is no reason to justify letting your stupidity affect your child (I mean the hamburger mothers).

It's not cool to simply disagree with everything the previous Government (as a means to signify a new regime or as a cost cutting exercise) did and surely to give school children good meals is a no-brainer.

Just do it simpleton co-elition!
Surely I'm right!

could we please have a bunch of Swedes over to run our schools because everything they do over there in their schools, they seem to do better

please

I turn my nose up at school dinners not because Jaimie's plan was flawed, but because it has not been followed enough.

My show stoppers are:

1- Sodexho (who has the catering contract) has refused to tell me what their food is made out of.

2- "fresh bread" means crappy white bread.

3- vegetables are served on the side and therefore can be easily avoided by my children. If I make say pasta veg is chopped and mixed in so it is eaten.

4- Nutrasweet infested puddings are served EVERY day at school.

The school lunch is seriously nutritionally inferior to our packed lunches. Bring up the nutritional standards and I will be delighted to sign up for school dinners. Continue to serve shit and I will not touch them with a ten foot barge pole.

the food has to taste alright I agree.

I live in the borough of Haringey and our school dinners are surprisingly similar to yours Mme Lindt! Our school dinner menu goes through a "nutrition cruncher" which ensures that the menu is nutritionally balanced over the course of a week, so children get a really good variety of foods.

Unfortunately, the take up of school dinners is not as good as it should be in DC's school. Apart from the small core of parents who insist their DC will only eat "freezer to oven" food, there are children who struggle with the quality of the food served.The amount of money available for ingredients is pitiful - .50p per child! Also, if like us, you are unfortunate enough to have a cook who doesn't like cooking and lacks training, the meals are fairly inedible regardless of how good the menu looks. My advice to get more kids eating healthy school dinners would be for the government to increase funding per child to ensure decent ingredients and properly paid and trained staff. Hmmm, see those pigs flying by....

I think that Jamie was definitely on the right lines and trying to do a GOOD THING and even if it hasn't worked as well as hoped in some areas I am sure he must have made a difference just by highlighting the problem.

One point though Easywriter:
"If mothers want to feed their children hamburgers through school railings then they deserve to be preached to about healthy eating "

IIRC the mothers involved in this story were massively misrepresented by the press and in a later series Jamie apologised to one of them. It seems that as well as introducing the new menus this school had cut the time available for lunch. The upshot was that some of these children were not managing to get served any food in the middle of the day so had asked their Mums to bring things. Apparently it wasn't just burgers either. Mainly it was sandwiches - some with plenty of healthy salad fillings. The papers concocted the story to appear otherwise

Not read the whole thread but i totally agree school dinners should be healthy.

about other parents feeding their kids crap through the gates - none of my business.

But when DD goes to school (a while off yet) I want her to continue to be offered zero or low salt home-made food that has plenty of veg, carbs, fruit and protein. Meals like shepherds pie, fish pie, macceroni and cheese, chicken stew etc. Plus fruit and some puddings. Going back to 50s receipes and menus with today's ingredients and ovens would be a good thing, IMO. That and lots of fresh air!! God I sound like something out of a pamphlet

DP and I took great care to wean DD on good, wholesome stuff and I don't want her going to scvhool and being offered salty, processed crap with little taste. I'd hope she would refuse it anyway.

Jamie has the right attitude - at least he is trying to be positive and improve diets.

The 'balanced plate' idea seems completely wrong to me! DD isn't allowed anything off the meat bar if she chooses cheese on the salad bar, or even extra veg if she asks for it- but she can have 2 or 3 slices of white bread to fill up on

As a toddler she would eat veg & protein for lunch, carb (pasta or something). Now school have to tell her this is wrong?

YANBU and normally I find JO very annoying. Con Libs are too keen to let us all get on with things because we will make the right choices - but obviously we haven't been so we need a bit of preaching to!

don't know much about the balanced plate thing, I reckon if everything available was decent and healthy, kids could choose whatever they wanted!

In our school there is the option of a meat or veggie meal a day- both of which are well balanced and usually tasty- so for any parent looking at the menu they look good. However, they then sell pizzas, cheese on toast and cookies and snacks like that at both break and lunch so the kids spend all their dinner money on those- until they are allowed out of school in key stage 4 and then they go to the chippy. So even if the option is there they don't necessarily take it.

I have also eaten with a 14 year old who had never seen a grape- and almost a full class and never tried mango so i brought them one in to try. Is madness.

But I agree if only healthy options were offered then they could be given the freedom to choose

I can't get salt to put on my spud from the school canteen, but I regularly see kids waving a slice of greasy pizza in one hand and a massive chocolate biscuit in the other.

But that's ok cos they're cooked from scratch. And they don't have any salt in them

Just to throw a perhaps unexpected oar in:

the whole Healthy Food At School And No Chips approach can be problematic for children with sensory disorders, children on the spectrum, and similar. I know children who, in a situation of sensory overwhelm (like, for example, a school dining hall), will not manage to eat anything except something beige (monochrome beige diet is quite common for children with sensory issues - they gradually branch out but cannot productively be forced). Chips, bread, the forbidden turkey twizzlers (eurgh).

None of this directly affects me - we home educate, and we can offer food that our children can cope with, in an unhurried and unstressful environment.

But if I were a parent of a schooled child with the sorts of eating difficulties that go with sensory disorders of various kinds, I'd definitely be looking at a packed lunch rather than the multi-coloured, multi-textured and AAAGGGHHHH mixed-up foods the school would consider appropriate. And I'd most definitely be looking askance at the school preaching about the evils of crisps if crisps were all my child was able to eat in the institutional environment.

Walk a mile in the shoes of a child with sensory issues before you judge their diet. I doubt these children's difficulties ever crossed JO's mind.

ommmm, I'm laughing (in a been-there-and-done-that kind of way) at your 'aaaagggggghhh'. "Mixed up" food is my AS son's idea of hell.

Soggy semolina, AmazingBouncingFerret. Soggy! [shakes head]

AlfredaMantolini - it's that whole put-more-than-one-food-type-on-the-plate-at-once thing. Craziness. And putting the pudding on the same tray? What The Hell are they thinking????? Way to make everything absolutely inedible in one fell swoop. Sheesh.

As a non-British person, I find the British way of serving children one type of food (burgers, sausages, nuggets) and grown-ups another very strange.

Why can't everyone eat the same thing?

totally agree journey, I much prefer restaurants where they offer smaller portions of proper food!

I remember being happily surprised on holidays to see kids eating what would be classed in England as 'grown-up food'

Absolutely agree Journeywoman. My DC ALWAYS eat what we eat at home. I just don't get the concept of "kids food", particularly when said food is generally highly processed with loads of salt and of little nutritional value. I think it should be dubbed "anti-kids" food.

I think Jamie did the right thing with school dinners, they were atrocious locally. There are those who were never taught to cook who now have children. Those children are now growing up not knowing how to cook either. I don't think you can make much difference to those who are too old and don't want to change, but we all know that if you persist with young children they will see it as normal and that will stay with them as they grow up, they will in turn pass that onto their own children.

Home economics should be teaching proper cookery from scratch, with nutrition (not how to make blancmange from a packet - one of my HE lessons).

Jamie's Ministry Of Food was being taken up across the country by different Councils and NHS trusts. My SIL is involved with one in Wilts. I doubt whether that will continue though due to the huge budget cuts needing to be made.

If you are in hospital and you need to ask what it is they are putting on your plate, there is something seriously wrong. Especially as the food from the cafe and restaurant is really nice and prepared in the same kitchens.

"Healthy school should not mean they have to ban choc & biscuits - as long as there is a balance there. "

From what I've overheard in various conversations, there wasn't a balance though. School trip luchboxes are more of a free for all and are generally full of chocolate, crisps and little else

OK so it was a good idea to try to improve the standard of school dinners but I have found some of Jamie Oliver's ideas rather pretensious and out of touch with the sort of food that most kids eat. The whole campaign treats parents in a patronising way when most of us are doing our best to give our kids healthy meals on a limited budget.

Did try giving my dd school meals but she didn't like them and the school did not tell us for several weeks that she was often not eating most of it ! Also she is a slow eater and often did not have time to finish her food.

since switching to packed lunch we know what she is eating and she seems happier.

I have had problems with my dd being underweight in the past and was referred to a dietician so can confirm her diet is healthy.

At primary school age children are usually encouraged to be active and I am concerned that we may be getting children particularly girls to be picky about what they eat at too young an age.

Just out of interest, I thought I would add that I live within walking distance of the secondary school which was the one where the fast food was passed through the fence. Another take away has opened opposite the school and business is brisk. But also at 3pm when the secondary school turns out and Im on the way to the infants I see the seniors piling out into the chip shop.

This area is just like many others, the majority of parents want the best for their children but there are many idiots around too. I think the same as a lot of the parents, Im happy for them to have school meals provided they are eating them. Its a lot less trouble for me to pay for them rather than fart about making sandwiches or whatever.

My eldest doesnt have school dinners unfortunately because as he is autistic he likes the same lunch every day and wasnt eating school dinners. Fortunately I am able to make his lunch reasonably healthy (wholemeal bread cheese sandwich) plus fruit but he is allowed crisps. His little sister starts school full time in September, and next week we are going to go for a trial school lunch and see how we get on. But as all her brother and many of her friends have sandwiches, thats what she says she wants.

We don't have school dinners where my dc go to school here in Ireland, but we do have a 'lunchbox policy' and it is policed.

Must have 2 types of fruit, must have a healthy sandwich, must have a yogurt or actimel or danone. Any of those corner yoghurts are not acceptable. On top of that they can take in one of: cheese, raw veg, dried fruit snack. And they are allowed a granola bar. Drinks are cordial, water or a fruit juice. On Friday's they can take in a bag of crisps too.

I believe this is standard in the region. My sis is the east of the country and she has the same policy.

If they bring in something non standard it's confiscated and you get a text.

Now come secondary school all bets are off, but primary is very stringent.

PS: My ds9 knows more about the food pyramid than I do!