Jamie Oliver has bolluxed up school meals - fewer kids eat them since his show

[TheDullWitch]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/12/nfood112.xml

Maybe people just don't want to change.

cheese is cheap for a buit of grated
marmite is cheap
egg is cheap

it isnt made from, horse

sandwichs, i dont really want dc to eat somuch white bread, and they dont like brown bread sandwichs

whcih youghurt do you buy? mine has never come for as little sas 25p. besides which i think it is too full of sugar, so would prefer dc not to have it on a regular basis

apples are cheap certainly, but not all fruit is, and on a regular basis i found that fruit sent to school didnt get eaten

raw salad type stuff, i cant get mine to eat it.

but, in school they have hot meatballs and pasta with veg. or salmon and veg etc , followed by desert. less processed stuff, with much less salt in it. and all for just 1.80. i dont think i could cook that cheaply and include a desert.

mine dont really eat yogurt, i was usi9ng it as an example as asked

please dont start ripping me to shreds. We live in kent and buy lots of fresh kent produce cheaply. You can EASILY do packed lunches for 3 children for very little money. School dinners are expenmsive if you are living to a budget or want to spenmd your money on something else. its a fact

Well I'm bloody glad I can cook a decent balanced meal for less than £1.80 per head, otherwise we would be royally fucked

Message withdrawn

Packed lunches (indeed all meals really) are only expensive if you can't/won't do food preparation and cooking. Basic healthy food ingredients are dirt cheap as a rule, it's the processed muck that costs a fortune.

Not true of meat and fish IME.

Lots of pulses....

I'm afraid Jamie's message didn't get as far as Bedfordshire! I am putting dds back to packed lunches next term because school meals are too small, there is little choice of vegetables (and only one type allowed) and unless your child is in the first class in there is no fruit or yogurt - it's a disgrace!

nonononono
i wasnt haveing a go at fio. or anyone else
i just cant do healthy packed lunchs that my kids will actually eat. they come home with practically the entire lunchbag intact, and i then suffer in guilt and shame.
at least this way i know they have been offered a hot meal with vegetables and many times they have come home and said it was something they loved and why cant i make something like that for them.

tonights dinner is chicken cooked in youghurt [plain] with some spices andn red pepper and potatos , i think the chicken cost about 4ish pounds, so total cost probly five ounds, divid

yeah , ok, i can cook for less than 1.80 a head.

Probably school meal take up rises and falls and it's really hard to find an explanation most of the time. I've heard that some children won't eat healthier menus (object to the removal of chips etc) but you could take the view that this is a long term issue not something that can be sorted in a year or so.

My DS does not do "mixed up food" so would not eat school dinners but he does eat:

Tortilla/pitta with cheese/ham
Or peanut butter/marmite/cheese/ham sandwich (brown bread)
Raw Brocolli/carrots/peppers/cucumber/carrots
Babybel, if not having cheese in his sarnie
Humzinger
Fruit smoothie

I am pretty sure his lunch costs the same or more than a school dinner as his juice drink is over 50p on its own!

I am hoping DD will have school dinners 2/3 times a week as she is less fussy and loves her grub!

Our school dinner service changed fairly marginally after JO, and got rid of some of it's least healthy options and added "crudite available every day" but it's just not big enough and they seem to run out regularly. ds comes home starving (granted he does eat a huge amount) so I really can't see the point. I think that if he had a proper sized lunch at school it would be cheaper than packed lunches, and I would definately prefer it in the winter. dd is a picky eater, so we haven't even tried school dinners on her (evey now and then she asks for a week of dinners, but only when her best friend of the moment does).

I also think their is tendancy to have packed lunches in summer and school dinners in winter too. A seasonal thing

Unfortunately ds's school got rid of the kitchens (I gather they used the space for a staff room - no idea what happened to old staff room). So it's packed lunches for the next six years. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

£1.50 per day x 3 children .

Doesn't make any difference how good it is, we couldn't afford it I'm afraid.

I meant 'there' btw

I meant 'there' btw

I skimmed the article quickly and one thing leapt out at me - the whole article is based on the views of private contractors who have taken on running school meals and cut costs to increase their profits. The basis of their business was challenged by Jamie Oliver. My political views on this are waayy to the left of JO's (I gather he's a Tory voter) but I was pretty impressed nonetheless with what he did with that series and the changes it inspired. It also created the environment in which the terrible catering company used by several London local authorities was dumped, as the councils were put under pressure by parents concerned about what their kids were being fed.

Ours (Shropshire) is £2 a day for rubbish. Menus look OK but in practice they rarely stick to them, saying that the reason they put fishfingers and chips on was because the roast chicken dinner that was advertised had run out at the first sitting. And I can't believe they offer 3 choices to 5, 6 and 7 year olds and expect them to pick the healthy one.

We had a healthy eating day last year, and the pudding was, wait for it, jelly and ice-cream with one slice of pear on top. Main course was something like oven baked fish and chips with tinned sweetcorn. Pathetic.

Mine have packed lunches and they are a damned sight healthier than than the yuk the school serves up.

My memories of school dinners was of proper food.

shepherds pie, sausage pie, roast dinners, cheese/spam (okay - spam is pushing the boundaries) salad, fishfingers/burgers and chips on occasion. Chips a regular on menus, but with plenty of other stuff with.

No 'Smiley' faces, turkey twizzlers or chicken nuggets.

Thats the stuff i object to - reconstituted shit.