School dinners - enough food for a primary school child?

[BettyBathroom]

neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/

Have a look at this blog by a nine year old girl. I can't believe how little food they seem to be fed and I also can't believe that food costs £2.00.

My DS's old primary school was so confident about their new menu that they invited all parents to school to try it. On the strength of what I ate, DS took packed lunches....

I'd have loved to write a blog about the school dinners when I was a kid in the seventies. If my best mate Gill's out there do you remember how you dry-heaved over 'black bits in the cauliflower'??? Ahh... those were the days.

I think the meals aren't great but it is the food, transport, storage, chef (loose terminology), electricity and cleaning up that costs £2, not the food.

My children said years ago that one of the reasons they preferred packed lunches was that you got more food! It's paltry.

God is that all they get? My poor ds1! That's just about enough for my six yearold but no wonder my 9 year old is starving.

The meals reall can be so shit, I knew that, but I didn't realise they were so small. 7 to 10 year olds need the same amount of calories as an adult woman - around 1850, which averages out at 600 calories per meal.

If children aren't being given an adequate lunch, they are going to come out of school and hit the snacks hard, which, paradoxically, will lead to unhealthy weight gain.

Why can't schools feed our children properly? It's not hard! Prisons fucking manage it!

this is the recommended menu for a women's prison. It's recomended by the fsa.

The amounts, for lunch, are what we should be offeringt all children over 7. Why is this not happening?

My son is always ravenous when he gets in.

He has told me that thye give him portions that are the same size as I give to my 2 yr old. I wasn't sure that I believed him, but now I think I do.

yep they are crap which is why my kids rarely have school dinners, they had one today as we got up late, very late and i hadnt made pack ups last night! they will need a snack at pick up time as they will be starving! and they are £2:10 here or maybe £2:20? i can never remember.

The portions aren't big enough for a main meal but it is just lunch. During the holidays DCs and me only eat a sandwich, a boiled egg and bread or a bowl of soup and a bit of fruit or a yoghurt for lunch. These are about the equivalent in size. My DCs also get a fruit snack in the morning.
I do think £2 is too expensive though. Packed lunch children don't pay towards cleaning up, supervisors costs so surely this £2 should only cover the cost of food and preperation.

you say "it's just lunch" as if lunch isn't important.

Do a poll online. How many people sent their children to school with the expectation that because the child would be getting a hot lunch, he/she would only need a snack tea?

And school dinners were designed to be the main meal of the day, and certainly for parents on benefits, they ARE supposed to be the child's main meal of the day! They are supposed to provide a good whack of fat, protein, iron, calcium, fibre, and various micronutrients, whereas all they seem to ACTUALLY provide is processed wheat in various forms.

Ds1 frequently eats more bread with his free school dinner than he actually gets given for a free school dinner. This meal is supposed to be an adequate 33% of his diet - if I fed him like that for the other two meals, the ones I am in charge of, he'd be malnourished. If three of a certain quality of meal per day will make a child malnourished, it shouldn't be a meal option. My child should not be able to choose to have rice with mashed potatoes (and nothing else because the meat has run out and the vegetable is sweetcorn for the fourth day running), , with a fairy cake for pudding. It should not even be available to him in that format.

I know lunch is an important meal too but imo dinner/tea is the main family meal and I don't expect too much at lunchtime. If they were bigger I don't think my DCs would eat their dinner a few hrs later.
I take your point about free school meals providing adequate nutrition. In the school I work in I know lots of children come to school without breakfast and get very little for dinner but school meals are not there to replace parents responsibility to provide for their children.
I also take your point about suitable choices and would hope my DCs are never faced with rice and mash. The meals need to provide quality over quantity.

I wish for a "like" button for colditz's post.

I agree. My 9yr old dd comes home from school absolutely ravenous when she's had a school dinner. Last week for instance their lunches were: pizza with potato croquettes, spicy bolognaise pasta with garlic bread, cheeseburger and chips, roast dinner, salmon nuggets and chips - salad is available with all meals. Puddings are either a yoghurt or a hot pudding (choc sponge and custard, brownie and ice cream, rocket lolly, apple crumble and custard etc).

This just isn't acceptable for £2.10 a day. The preparation, cooking, serving budget should be coming from the school's budget not the dinner money which should be used for purely the food. IMO.
As far as it being some children's main meal of the day - that's exactly what it is. There are some children at our school who DO NOT EAT apart from what they are given there. We pull them out of class for 10 mins at the beginning and end of the day to give them cereal for their breakfast and a toasted sandwich for their tea as they would receive nothing else.

I think DD gets bigger meals than that for her lunch - they definitely get two courses with the pudding being something like apple pie and custard.

They need so much energy at that age with all the growing and running around, I think that we are so messed up about food now that many people underestimate how many calories growing children need, as many as give them far too many.

What's wrong with a roast followed by apple crumble and custard?

Nothing at all SardineQueen, it's the rest of the week I have issues with!

Ice lolly? Choc brownie!? Yet school has the nerve to police lunchboxes?

You're exactly right Sardine, roast followed by apple crumble and custard is fine, except that it's a very thin slice of salt laden processed turkey roll (or similar) with one small potato and (often) tinned veg, followed by apple "pie filling" crumble.

The menus all sound great, but it's the quality of the ingredients and the portion sizes that let them down. Only about 60p of your £2 is spent on food.

Ice lolly is the most shit pudding I have ever seen.
That was the biggest shocker of those pictures I thought.
Water and sugar and colouring. Mmmmmm healthy.

My expectations mustn't be that high - I thought those meals looked quite nice. The tray it's presented on doesn't help how it looks but overall I think that seems fine for lunch.

Squishy your post brought tears to my eyes and I'm used to seeing very deprived children, its so nice to hear that the school do that :)

DD is in recep and we all went in for lunch with them when they started going full days. It seemed pretty good.

I suspect as with many things there is huge variation in quality and quantity depending on with local authority you are in.

I read a post last week here on mn where the school wanted parents to provide an alternative to sandwiches! Trying to police bread products out of lunches!!

And yet they think an ice Lolly is fine

No sandwiches?

What about a nice roll instead

The portions look a bit small, but the main problem is that there is not enough veg/fruit by a long shot - if there was a decent serving of 2 veg on the prison tray, then it would look and feel much more filling!
I agree, it's not really worth the money and definitely wouldn't be enough for a hungry child who may not have had breakfast and won't get a proper cooked evening meal.

My biggest worry was that I'd have to scoff the dinner down before the ice-lolly melted.
I know that this is the only meal some kids get, same at my school but that doesn't make it right. Schools are becoming responsible for more and more. Half my class come in filthy and without a coat but I don't wash and dress them!