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!

We had one wonderfully creative cook who gave generous portions. Then a much poorer cook took over, not as tasty and measly weasly portions.

It can be done in schools. I know one where they use all local produce, the staff eat them which shows how good they are! Parents can come in have lunch, as long as they book in advance.They are a bit rare-I go into a lot and that is the only one where I would want to eat one-they are just like homemade.

The thing is they HAD to do something about the quality of school dinners - they'd got shockingly bad. I've been teaching probably a decade now and I still remember the dinners served by my final teaching practice school - chips, grey hotdogs, grey onions - the only colour was the radioactively glowing ketchup. They were literally so bad I felt physically sick having to walk through the hall that was set up for lunches to get into the staffroom. The head had proudly shown me the school before I started and bragged how they cooked dinner for other schools in the county - what I saw wasn't cooking - it was utterly vile.

Compare that to now where I go through different schools and see lasagna, garlic bread, salad bars, jacket potatoes and the like - the difference is massive. Yes, you can still tell which day is pizza day when you're doing the lunch register and the dinner numbers suddenly double - but compared to what WAS going on - it's a breakthrough.

The trouble is though - you still get parents, you've got some on this thread - who'd prefer chips served every day for a quiet life. You have parents who refuse to send water in for kids to drink - and the number of times you get told that kids are allergic to water unless it's got half a bottle of Kia Ora in there is quite startling. I know it's an issue for SEN, and schools I've worked in have liased closely with parents to get adapted meals brought in for the autistic children, plated up specially, with things like colour/texture issues taken into consideration.

I've got a soft spot for Jamie, I'll admit it. I think that the fact he's got off his rear and is trying to do something about the state of food is pretty top notch. Plus I hit the age of about 28 unable to cook, I simply had never had the background of cooking with mum as a kid or anything because she was too busy working - it was only when he ran that Ministry programme, and actually brought cooking down to an accessible level (recipes can actually be pretty daunting if you're not familiar with the language and terminology used - or with that horrid gloopy stage some stuff goes through before it turns out perfectly) that I actually got down to business and started learning how to cook myself. I owe the guy a debt for doing that because it was the level I needed at the time, rather than the Blessed Saint Delia's fifty minute seminar on how to boil an egg.

Having said all that - a good/bad cook does still make all the difference. My old school had one who viewed her job not as cookery - but as warfare - she'd cook every vegetable till all atomic structure was gone, and one morning she managed to evacuate the school at 8.50am... cooking the chips for lunch. She went off sick, we got a stand-in in and the takeup of school meals went up by something like 20%... and about 50% among the staff!

A senior school I know buy in from Asda! The only things they sell are sausage rolls, bacon rolls and 'baguette' style sandwiches which the staff complain about making

Needless to say my DD will not be going there even if they are a new academy!!!

Where we live now primary/elementary schools don't serve lunch at all, no kitchens and no lunch hall. So we have to make puck lunches every day. In the UK we had a Sodexho served school, so we had no choice but to have pack lunches there too (really bad food, small portions and very poorly organised, if the kids were in the last class to go in they frequently didn't get a whole meal). Post JO they tweaked the menu a bit, but lunches were still small, nasty and poorly organised. The only difference was that as a parent I was more aware how bad they were. So I wonder if this was part of the reason for the dip, increased awareness leading to more parents opting out for packed lunches.

On the other hand when I was at school lunches were a nightmare. They were very cheap ("good value") so my mother made us have them, but they were really really nasty, and policed by power hungry ladies who virtually force fed us. I can remember crying through lunch on many occasions. So I would not like to see lunches made compulsory.

I blimmin love our school dinners and would choose them over sandwiches any day. I ate in the dinner hall today and felt sorry for the children with processed ham sandwiches, crisps and capri-sun drinks... think of all the salt, fat and sugar that lot would pack.

I had shepherd's pie (veggie option available), carrots and fresh fruit salad.

The reason kids eat sandwiches is not because they don't loike the food; it's because their mates do, or they are cheaper, or they get to sit outside in summer, or....

So why reduc e ths standards pof the meals that are eaten? Seems bozarre.

Mum was PA to the head of school emals for her County in the Sixties and says that compared to the effort they put in to be healthy then Jamie is nowt really- ensuring good butchers, fresh veg etc.

yet another friend used to make sarnies to give to kids at the school she was Secretary atin the ninetiesbecause sanwiches were coming in mouldy, with rotten apples and maybe a bit of really slimy lettuce as the budgets and standards were too low.

A fairly steep decline over a few years, no?

most important also is the fact that the one group that always eat school dinenrs (heck, even mine have a mix- 2 on school dinners, 1 on sandwiches) is the poorest children on free school emals (and it really is only the poorest- you only get it if you receive JSA, IB or IS- any working tax credit disqualifies you) and theya re the kids whose parents really struggle to make great ehalthy food at home (and before anyone says healthy food is cheap, only of you can access it- here it's a trip to Spar with all their incumbent frozen nastioes, or a £3 trip to Asda / market on bus.... a lot out of a benefit income, and we're far less rural than a lot of the area). I'd say keeping nutrrtitional standards as high as possible to ensure those kids get offered a decent meal every day is pretty damned important.

Yes the reason dd1 has packed lunch is because her friends do. I'd much rather have her dinners, tbh. But she was miserable on them because she couldn't sit with her friends.

Dd2 would have been getting dinners, but if they are going back to the 'good old days' of lumpy custard and turkey twizzlers, she won't be.

I totally agree with what Jamie Oliver has done. My ds has school dinners everyday which makes my life a whole lot easier as a working parent as I don't have to cook him a hot meal every night. His school dinners area great (I've tasted them!). If this government is going to cut budgets for school dinners I will be really p***d off. As you can tell I feel quite strongly about this issue.

sancti You are absolutely right about access to healthy food - its only available for those with cars, a (very rare) local greengrocer, or keen, muscly hikers.

I also fear this attack on Jamie Oliver is a prelude to cuts in the school dinner budget.

Mumtoone and everyone on here - would you write to your MP about this if they were cut?

What else could we do?

I love Jamie and support him to the ends of the earth! I loved the show that he did here in the US-we needed it. I work in an elementary school and there's no way my DS is eating his lunch there more than once a week. It's rubbish.

We live in a deprived area where the average child has a diet high in fats and sugars. School dinners are the only healthy meal they get. The pack lunches are shocking as well, nutella sandwiches, crisps, cakes and fruit shoots. I think everyone should pay £1 a day for a healthy school dinner, that way no child is stigmatised for being on free school dinners and do away with the pack lunch options. Teachers should sit with the children to eat as from what I've seen the competence of children nowadays in using cutlery properly is on a serious decline

We should all be responsible for what our children eat - not expect the Government to decide for us.

Don't shirk your parental responsibilities off onto Jamie Oliver.

Sorry I'm late to this but
spybear assuming it will benefit the people who need it the most i.e. those who get free school meals anyway is just wrong to start off with. Just because people are on benefits does not mean they automatically are the 'unhealthy' ones please see link www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=6850701

And mila are you from the continent? Its just I am and the menus that are offered to tourists are very different to those offered to natives, so yes menus will have seperate foods for children but they are because of demand from 'mainly' british families. AS for crisps being sold in big packets-- they always have, difference is that a French or Italian child knows not to eat them all in one go, most dont even want to..... as for school dinners we could learn a lot from our french neighbours...

Finally Yes I think JO has tried to do a good thing but unfortunately at school age, especially secondary school, it is already too late... I am working on a local community thing to encourage children from a much younger age to eat different healthier foods... and it is working... He needed to go into preschools, nursries and children centres more rather than focusing on schools. IMPO

Right, Barmy, and exactly what power do parents have to set the nutritional standards for school dinners? Can't see the MD of Sodexho quaking in his boots because Mrs Smith phones him up to object if his company serves up vile slop. Can't see Mrs Smith even getting through to his PA, tbh.

Unfortunately, the Government has enough say in the budget which has consequences for the menus in school dinners.

I don't feel that it's about shirking our parental responsibilities onto Jamie Oliver, he's flying the flag for what I believe in - good, wholesome, tasty food for our children.

I pander to my children (in terms of whether they have a packed lunch or school dinner, it's usually affected by the seasons and what their best friends do at luchtime) but honestly I would be disappointed were my children to be offered chips everyday.

I'm very interested in the idea that only school dinners could be offered. That way everyone is the same. Never underestimate the power of peer presure, I'm sure children would eat things they are otherwise faddish about were their mates to do so.

Chips would still feature, just not often. As for GoodDaysBadDays I'm not sure how old you child is (I think by the time a child is at secondary school they're not for changing) but, really, is it not worth a try? Healthy school meals are not about alfalfa and tofu that's a misconception, I bet most of the healthy meals you cook at home would feature in a good school dinner menu.

But I still think that if you feed your child rubbish (out of choice rather than that being all you can afford) then you are not doing the right thing for your child and healthy school meals are a great way to help redress the balance.

Bit of cross posting there, but I agree with you Mattahatta, what is this thing about children's food and adults food? I find it laughable (and I am English), the distinction was never made when I was a child and my children know no such distinction either.

It may just be because I dislike cooking and one good meal is just about all I can manage, butr I just don't get it.

I really admire JO for the work he has done on School lunches but ime the nutritional aspect is one of the problems with school lunches.
Healthy doesn't necessarily mean good quality, or tasty and quantity and price is also an issue.
I have always insisted my ds' have cooked lunch but this year, they have changed to packed lunch 3 days a week.
Our school has it's own kitchen and catering team, we live in a rural area and should have a glut of decent ingredients.
The menu seems ok, but the quality is rubbish...
Quite frankly I got sick of my boys complaining they were only give 1 fish finger and 5 chips, or 2 pieces of carrot..at £1.90 a day, you should be providing more food than that.
Then it transpired that they could pick and choose from the menu, so ds2 had a meal of plain pasta, some sweetcorn and a piece of cucumber!
er...I've paid for the meal....I want him to have the meal
Then it turned out the school had a huge profit sitting in the bank, from school lunches and they were wondering if they should buy some plates?!?
I wanted to scream...you shouldn't have a huge fucking profit you should be spending it on bloody food!
What is wrong with our schools and lunch providers that we can't get this right???

Feed your own children yourself - packed lunches, anyone?

Mattahatta I'm not from the continent but have been going every year for years and things have changed.

I know crisps have always been sold in large packets,it's the small individual packets I've seen over the last few years that concern me.They even sell multipacks now,it's the crisp/snack culture thing. They sell masses of crappy kids yogurts,ready packed individual crappy biscuits,crappy cereal etc etc. The freezer section is crammed with crappy fast food too .

When I used to go to France and stayed with my penfriend we'd snack on a couple of pieces of ham from the butcher or fruit that was pretty much all there was. Crisps only came in big bags which you occasionally shared out on a picnic,I think it would be a whole different story now.

Back then you could only get extortionate Swiss meusli if you wanted breakfast cereal,now when you go to a supermarket it's crappy cereal aplenty, you can take your pick basically. There are way more fat food outlets too and I have to say last year I saw a fair few rather overweight French children.

Also I have to say we don't tend to stay in uber touristy areas or eat in touristy restaurants. It's strange as I have definitely noticed more children's menus cropping up.

Seems I wasn't imagining it:-

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/this-europe-french-obesity-grows-with-new-fondness-for-fast- and-fatty-food-541141.ht

Then google French obesity problem,quite scary really and sad not just the obesity issue but some French food culture must have been eroded.

Sorry crap at links but I'm sure you'll find it

jamie oliver pisses me right off, and he's piling on the pounds himself

i realistically blame the lack of pe in schools and real long playtimes to run about and burn off energy. too much emphasis is placed in sitting down in the classroom.

food really doesn't come into it. as much as we like to blame it