WHAT??? Banning Packed Lunches!

[MojitoMagnet]

So apparently Packed Lunches are likely to be banned!

guardian article

I suspect the main reason is to drive down the cost-per-meal for school dinners. The idea that anyone should be able to dictate what my child eats is so repugnant I'm lost for words. By all means give schools the power to intervene if a particular child is regularly sent to school with a bag of crisps and a mars bar, but taking the choice away from everyone else is ridiculous!

From the article

"Packed lunches, and more than half of our children bring packed lunches into schools, two-thirds of those have crisps in them and two-thirds have confectionery in them," he said.

"The best schools, the schools with good food, find ways of making packed lunches the least exciting option."

He said if packed lunches were banned, schools would be able to provide better meals at a cheaper price and this would help boost children's performance.

Well, I had packed lunched for my entire school life. And I went to Cambridge. From a comp. I don't think my performance would have been boosted by eating the slop provided as school dinners.

DD2 is off school today - she had heatstroke yesterday, collapsed at lunchtime, ambulance, hospital, tests etc. she's fine, btw, but staying at home today. I just asked her how she would feel about school dinners. She looked at me and said 'I'd be home educated. Their vegetarian option is peas. And they put the meaty spoons and forks in the peas'. :(

Oh god at the idea that there's not much difference in the cost of school dinners vs. packed lunches.

No, if you are sending your DC's to school with lobster thermidore sandwiches.

But otherwise, there is simply no contest between the cost of school dinners (£29 pw in my area) vs the cost of good quality, healthy packed lunches (between a fiver and a tenner a week but with a tenner being the upper figure when more expensive ingredients are used).

If you don't have to budget very carefully, it will seem that the odd £10-£20 here or there is no big deal. When you do, then spending an extra £10 a week on school lunches, is an inefficient use of scarce family resources and simply cannot be justified for many people.

What do people put in their children's packed lunches that make them cost less than £2 a day?

I am genuinely interested, as I do a lot of packed lunches - not for school but for out and about at weekends/holidays (as kids are coeliac so can't just pick something up when we're out). My packed lunches cost far more than this, though being gluten-free doesn't help, obviously (bread is £2.50 for a 400g loaf...)

RussiansontheSpree - why would you need a separate kitchen for vegetarians/vegans? You would need good, hygienic processes though - no sharing meaty spoons etc, obviously.

Russians you'd need separate kitchens because they never do have good hygienic processes and they always do shove the meaty spoons etc in the veggie or vegan food. And some people are vegan because of dairy allergy and milk spatters. I just wouldn't trust them an inch, I really wouldn't.

Listening to the arguments in the radio it seems that the major driver is to force people to subsidise the lunches some want. Well, they can bog off. Unless they make everything vegan, also nut free and gluten free (well, i suppose everything wouldnt have to be gluten free they could have bread and gluten free bread I guess). That would be fine.

Or they could change the name of school dinners to 'lunchtime chips'. Most kids would be happy to eat them and they wouldn't trigger allergies etc. also, cheap.

This is dd's packed lunch daily.

One whole meal bread sandwich with filling usually cheese - 50p at most.
Carton of juice - 30 p from multi pack
Cake or cookie from pack - 25p sometimes more if treated to a big cookie from packs of 4.
3 x portions of fruit or veg usually a peach and satsuma and a little salad of green veg - 50 - 70p

So £1.75 - 2.00 depending on components. Cheaper, healthier, dd happier.

it wont happen

but in general school dinners in england are healthier than packed lunches. obv not in mn world where its all quinoa salads and home made beetroot crisps, but thats not your average packed lunch.

i say england, as apparently scotland has different quality standards (hence that little girl s blog) and i don t know about wales/n.i.

thanks, sparkly
ds wants packed lunches. our school dinners are a quid and i was wondering if packed lunches would work out cheaper or not

Sooo the Tories want to sop SAHP,extend the school day,cut holidays and now stop the family meal at night.

We all eat together in the evening.I can't afford or justify school dinners and a cooked evening meal.

When are we allowed to spend time together as a family and parent the way we want to?

Our school dinners(which have some award)are carb heavy,they don't ensure the kids pick veg or ensure they eat it,they run out and the portions for the older kids are too small.They already eat waaaay too late(big school).They're not that healthy.On top of that they continuously screw up payment ie say you owe when you don't.

What if you can't afford school meals?

I kind of resent 2 posh boys who run a restaurant business forcing school dinners on us all to pay for their policy.If the gov want more uptake they need to put more money into them.

Naff off Gove.

I'm not even sure my DC's school kitchen/dining hall could cope with 100% school dinners. Packed lunches are eaten in the classroom or outside. There would probably have to be multiple 'sittings' if 100% of children had school dinners.

It's all getting a bit too Orwellian isn't it...

My DS's packed lunch is healthier than any of the prison-style school dinners on offer. He has decent cuts of meat in his sandwiches, lots of fruit, pure fruit juice/water and a homemade cake/flapjack for pud. The school dinner menu is full of poor quality food and ridiculously fat & sugar laden unhealthy desserts. I categorically would never allow any teacher/politician/whoever to dictate how I feed my (very healthy, perfect-weight for-their-age) children.

BTW, it wasn't that long ago was it when most schools had to take beef/horsemeat off their menu. It's a sad fact of life that cost and supply will always override the quality of school meals.

I can't believe how cross I am at this time of the morning having just read the whole sorry story in the paper!!! Michael Gove's heart might be in the right place most of the time but Ye Gods he needs to engage his brain too sometimes!

I make my own bread - not sure how much that costs tbh but bread is not massively expensive- less than £2 a week

They get 1 biscuit from a packet unless I'm organised and make some. A branded packet of biscuits is less than £1 and I use less than a packet a week.

sandwich fillings would be maybe 1-2 chicken breasts, 2 eggs, £1 worth of cheese, bit of jam or choc spread on fridays so maybe £4 for sandwich fillings.

I cucumber, a carrot, grapes, bunch bananas, bags oranges/apples/pears. They get 3 things, 3 dcs so 45 items a week. Grapes are the most expensive, about £2.50 a week. I got a pineapple last week for £1 and it lasted 2 days. They can have melon every day for £2.50 a week, carrots are almost free, you can get bags of mixed pepper pretty cheap and use the rest in other meals. Fruit is the most expensive part, maybe £8 a week.

They drink tap water.

Sometimes I'll make a jelly or split a big pot of yoghurt. (1 big pot does 2 days)

So even with melon, pineapple and grapes it comes to £15ish a week. School dinners are £36. (for 3 dcs)

Pasta is cheap, as are flasks of baked beans with cheese and bread, flasks of soup.

missbopeep "are you saying that you can feed 2 children 10 packed lunches for under £20 a week?"

Yes. Firstly Dh also takes packed lunches to work (cheaper than subsidised canteen) so we already buy ham, bread, salad stuff, etc. Buying slightly bigger pack sizes so there's enough for the dc doesn't cost much more. Their packed lunches generally consist of:
Sandwich - 1 slice of bread , butter and 1 slice of ham
Small tub of grated cheese
Piece of fruit - would buy anyway for dd2 (she prob wouldn't choose any fruit at school inner time) and dd1 loves fruit
Yogurt - usually costs £3 for enough for 2 weeks
Squash in reusable bottle - always have squash in and they only have fairly weak squash

I think the extra costs for our dc having packed lunches works out at about (£1.50 for yogurts + £1.30 for a loaf of bread + 30p for larger pack of ham) so £3.10 a week. even allowing for extra fruit and cheese, it's nowhere near £20.

Imagining how they would cut the cost further sends a shiver down my spine.

Our LA recently changed the provider of school meals, after a tender process which saw the contract awarded to a cheaper bidder. My DD1 has to be the least fussy eater I know but she asked me to change her to packed lunches soon after. Apparently the 'toad in the hole' was made with frankfurters and the chicken portions still had feather stubs in the skin. The veg were cooked for so long they were 'slimy'.

The school doesn''t have the facilities to cook all food on the premises so they are totally reliant on third party suppliers. The company invovled in this case is not a specialist caterer, it supplies many different services from cleaning to gardening.

It's a bit bizarre but reading about the drive to extend the school day, shorten holidays, make every parent work whether they want to or not, and now force children to eat state provided food feels a bit, well, a bit sort of communist.

like the government's gone so far up it's own arse, it's come out the other side of the political spectrum.

mine has school meals and they are shit, and he rarely eats very much. I don't have time for making lunches but I hope I will at some point as he would undoubtedly eat better if I did.

Pizza and potato wedges, followed by cake with chocolate flavoured custard is not very healthy imo. Neither is 'just some chips because the meat was disgusting'.

they have the gall to police lunch boxes yet serve the kids on school meals the most appalling rubbish.

Pihigh if that is your child's lunch then they are not very nutritious. Not sure how old she is but 1 slice of bread?

Ham- high in fat and more importantly salt.
Cheese- high in fat and salt.
Yoghurt- unless it's plain then added sugar.
Squash- ditto.

Not enough fresh fruit/ veg.

Not sure how you make £3 of yoghurt last 2 weeks unless you buy a huge pot and decant into small pots for them.

Unfortunately this probably sounds like a jolly good idea to the politicians because most of them enjoyed good quality roasts and nursery puds at their expensive schools. I'd like to see Michael Gove tasting the typical offering at DD's school.

Same at our school Rooney, the food is disgusting and I refuse to pay for it. I have bought DD one of these and she gets a much nicer, healthier hot dinner!

I also agree that we eat together as a family so I couldn't just save on the cost of the hot evening meal.

It's also very easy to save money on packed lunches if you're having an expensive week/month or the school ask you for money for random crap with one day's notice Last night we had sausage & pasta bake and I chucked extra pasta in so the kids & Dh could have it in their packed lunch.

One of the things that invariably comes out every time a survey is done, is how much more competent money-managers poor people are, than the average. They have to be. They can't afford to shrug and say £5 extra to spend on this food a week, is no big deal. I think a lot of people simply can't grasp that - when you've got enough funds to cover it, it doesn't occur to you that it can be done much cheaper, because you don't need to do it cheaper.

School dinner is justifiable if your household budget can sustain it and it doesn't significantly impact on any other costs. But poor people spend a higher percentage of their household income on food and they are actually much better at managing that budget, than people who have more money. It's about the deployment of resources and where resources are scarce, you deploy more efficiently according to your priorities. So if your priority is that your kid gets a hot meal in school, you might be willing to forego something else to achieve that, but if your priority is that they take the bus/ have music lessons/ you put petrol in the car/ buy other household food and you can provide the DC's with a healthy school meal more financially efficiently than buying them a school dinner, then you will do that. If you don't have to make that choice because your household resources are such that you don't notice the cost of school meals, then it's going to be difficult to imagine why so many people go to the trouble and faff of preparing packed lunches for what seems such a small return - saving a tenner/ twenty pounds a week. But for many people when weighing up family resource deployment, slicing a fiver off the overall food budget, then slicing it off the cleaning budget, then the petrol budget etc., etc., is not obsessive meanness, it's a financial necessity.

missbopeep That was an example of probably the lunch items that add most to our food bill. They'll often have pasta with veg (pretty much free as it's basically leftovers), carrot sticks (again I usually have leftover carrots from the pack size we get), cherry tomatoes (we wouldn't use all those unless they went in packed lunches). Yes the yogurts have sugar in but it's the only ones DD2 will eat.

I find the press slant on John Vincent and Henry Dimbleby interesting because it's given a few of you here the opinion that they're "celebby types" or "2 posh boys who run a restaurant". What the newspapers aren't mentioning is how they met and came to run a restaurant chain. THeir credentials for this exercise are actually very sound and they're experience management consultants. As BoPeep said upthread, the point of the report that's being spectacularly missed is that if you have a greater uptake, the cost of school meals will go down while quality improves. THeir approach has been from a business POV as well as nutritional.