Ultra Processed School Lunches

[Magssss]

Like many of us, I’ve been reading a lot about ultra processed food recently and the fairly catastrophic effect it’s having on our health. It’s linked to everything from obesity to increased chance of cancer and heart disease and who knows what else.

I was looking at the kids (fairly standard) school lunch menu and it’s littered with UPF. Oven chips, pizza, sausages, fruity yoghurts, biscuits, jelly, ice cream. I remember eating loads of turkey dinosaurs/chicken nugget type food at school in the 90s and I know Jamie Oliver did some campaigning around the issue but our children are clearly still being fed mostly UPF. Then we as parents get blamed when children are struggling with weight gain at younger and younger ages. For some children this is their only meal of the day and it’s composed of essentially fake food.

I know I could switch to packed lunches but apparently the percentage of UPF in packed lunches is even higher unless you have the time to make everything including the bread from scratch. It’s a really frustrating situation.

I’m a teacher (big kids) and I swear you can’t find a vegetable in our canteen for love nor money.

given the portion sizes in primary school menus I doubt they are contributing massively to obesity!

schools are working on very tight budgets for their catering so they are doing the best they can - and they want to know it’s foods that will be eaten.

the school I work in does always have jacket potato’s and plenty of fruit available - infact the fruit is normally the most popular pudding choice

@Sirzy to be clear my criticism is not aimed at schools, who I think do the best job they can under difficult circumstances. My criticism is aimed squarely at the government who demonstrate such little regard for our kids health and education that they don’t properly fund school budgets.

I work in a sixth form college and the food in the cafe is probably 90% UPF at least. They have some salad pots (bought exclusively by staff) and I think they do jacket potatoes. They have pasta pots but it’s pre-made sauce and that weird pasta that’s reheated. There’s a hot cabinet filled with chicken strips, curly fries and shit like that, and the sandwiches and wraps are all pre-packed. Then the racks and racks of fizzy drinks, crisps, chocolate and sweets and packaged muffins/cookies/brownies. If I ever forget my lunch I have to hope there’s a salad left because even if I didn’t care about UPFs most of it is not appealing to me as an adult. Even the sandwiches rarely have salad in them.

I have to agree with you as a parent. My child's school menu (primary) isn't great either. They do offer fresh fruit and veg. There always seems to be an insipid form of veg ie) baked beans or peas and sweet corn. And the standard, sausage, sausage rolls, nuggets etc

They also offer a dessert. Chocolate cake, apple crumble, short bread,ice cream etc

But! What gets me is that when you send a packed lunch in, if any of those treats are in their lunch boxes, whether homemade or bought. They aren't allowed them. And, fuck me the evil crisp is completely banned. I feel like even with a small lunch box treat the food in his packed lunch is much more healthy for him.

Not sure as parents we can ever get it right.

And for context my kids are super healthy, lean and well muscled.

It's really difficult. I don't have kids, but just for 'fun' (I know, I need a hobby), I went to the supermarket and made a point of putting no UPFs in my basket. I started in the fresh aisles which was ok, if basic and unexciting. Then I had to walk the entire length of the supermarket to get frozen veg, skipping basically everything else. And couldn't get anything else in the frozen section either.

What are parents to do with added envy/peer pressure when kids see their friends are having 'fun'/'normal' stuff for packed lunches? Plus you're left with buying more expensive bread for sandwiches for less crap in it or making multiple trips to an actual bakery that goes stale really quickly.

Re school dinners, it's a cost thing - not just the (normally cheaper) cost of ingredients, but straight out of a packet takes far less time to prep than chopping/cooking from mostly scratch. i.e. oven chips versus peeling/chopping potatoes. Even if a company came up with a 'pre-prepped healthy meals' service, you can imagine the price and/or they'd have to make it processed on some level to make it workable I guess.

@Sparklfairy your supermarket experiment is just so telling isn’t it! And depressing. It’s just accepted that most of our food isn’t actually real food because it’s cheaper/more convenient. It’s just not good enough. Kids are growing up thinking this food is healthy and normal and it isn’t.

I'm really concerned about this. The more I hear Henry Dimbleby and others discuss the harmful and far-reaching effects of UPFs and the unwillingness of our government to do anything radical to address it, the more helpless I feel.

I dread to think what my young DC is eating at school 😞

I've just looked up a school I did supply at.

When I was there they had

a) compulsory free breakfast - compulsory to attend, they didn't force you to eat

b) a French chef who put some amazing food on at lunch time.

I've just checked they now use an external catering company. They have a 3 week rota of food - fair enough but the option IMHO were quite lazy eg one day it is a beef burger in a bun or a vegi burger in a bun with one veg option. Or meat curry or vegi curry.

Kids (and adults) function much better when they have a full stomach. Nutrition should be thought of as part of education.

I worked in a primary school and the portions were tiny and most kids ate about half of that then rushed out to play. I doubt kids are getting fat on their school lunches! I thought the food was OK. For example in a week they'd have a roast dinner, spaghetti bolognaise, jacket potato and chicken curry and rice. On a Friday they'd have oven chips and fish fingers so I suppose that counts as UPF but generally the meals seemed nutritious. There was a salad bar every day and most children would help themselves to that. Like I say, most ate very little. I can only remember a couple of kids who routinely cleared their plates.

I am a primary teacher and think on the whole the food is ok. There is a pizza day and a fish finger day but the roast dinner, curry, bolognese stuff is all quite good. In fact the teachers queue up when it is curry day! It's a 3 week rotation and the parents order meals in advance.

There's always veg - green beans, peas, broccoli etc - and salad which they choose one each of and it does get eaten. Pudding is fresh fruit or yoghurt/flapjack/cake/ice cream which again is chosen by the parents.

Of course there is a going to be an element of process to mass catering but I was pleasantly surprised when I started teaching.

The issue is that the vast majority of the country eat this stuff regularly. Starting with school lunches isn’t going to work if it means kids don’t eat anything at all because they’ve never seen a homemade cottage pie.

We basically need a public awareness campaign aimed firmly at adults. Two thirds of us are overweight and obese, and UPF is a contributing factor.

When my kids were small, we did the whole Annabelle Karmel thing of cooking from fresh and freezing. Then along came kids parties, kids meals and school dinners and it has been a struggle to stop them seeing UPF as normal. Recently we’ve made a lot of effort to eat well - no crisps, fewer shop-bought cake - and their range of food is increasing.

I think the issue here is when presented with veg at school the kids won't eat them. Even my son who eats loads of veg at home won't eat the veg at school. I put an apple in his packed lunch box and every day it comes home. Whereas when I serve him apple with lunch here it gets eaten.

I think it's partly the culture of food and kids as much as what is being served.

I agree, I'm very concerned after reading the UPF book by Dr Chris whatshisname.

I'm aiming to reduce our family UPF to 20% but it's very difficult with 3 teens, both me and DH working FT, and low budget.

This week I've used the bread maker to make bread for packed lunches every day so that at least the cheese / hummus / chicken sandwiches aren't UPF.

I've also put in the lunches this week:
Carrots & humous
Raisins
Greek yog with honey and blueberries
Mini cheeses
Boiled egg
(For adults) tub of nuts
Some homemade flapjacks
Fruit as usual (banana/ kiwi / apple / orange segments)

I'm limiting our UPF to:
Chutney for my cheese sandwich!
Nutella for the kids toast
Oatcakes
Mayo
Ketchup

I've cut out:
Ham
Crisps
Shop bought granola bars
Cereal except porridge oats

It's felt very healthy but it's not easy. I hope it's sustainable

For the teachers who say their schools are okay, is it definitely home made on premise?
I thought my kids’ food was also fine but then found out that most of it came out of industrial sized tins - bolognaise, cheese pasta etc.

It’s a sign of the times. I mostly take lunches to work (leftovers of things I’ve cooked) because it is so hard to find a healthy lunch in the city. There’s a couple of small bakeries/coffee shops that make their own bread and sandwiches. Pret and Subway do fresh salads (ignore dressing). Wish we had a Leon.

That sounds really elitist and fussy but it just shows how ppl are battling a food environment which is the opposite to a balanced diet.

What gets me is the farmfoods leaflet, not really an appropriate name!

I agree that school meals should be better quality. I’ve noticed a big change in the quality of menu recently which isn’t surprising considering the amount of money they have to pay for them.

If children are having school lunch every day that’s 190 meals out of 1095 meals a year (assuming 3 meals a day) so it shouldn’t have a huge influence. But unfortunately as we know that many family have to rely on school meals as a main meal and aren’t able to feed their children 2 or 3 healthy meals a day.

OP, I couldn’t disagree with you more on packed lunches being higher in UPFs. It’s far easier when you have control over the food being given to your child.

Compared with some European countries, what passes for lunch in schools in the UK is abysmal and not remotely adequate as the building blocks for good nutrition for children. Jamie Oliver did a fantastic job 15 or so years ago at exposing the “turkey twizzler” type of junk food that was routinely served in primary schools - what happened to his good work?

It's disheartening to see that despite awareness and efforts, UPF continues to dominate our children's meals.

My dd’s primary school was ok but secondary is poor. My dd doesn’t want a packed lunch because (her words “it’s too boring and healthy”). They are usually in a rush/queue so often my dd invariably chooses a UP beige option for a main and a dessert packed with sugar eg cheap hot sausage roll and a chocolate muffin. She tells me chirpily on her “healthy” days that’s she got a bottle of strawberry milk instead of a muffin 😪

The cognitive dissonance is amazing given last term the school were preaching about 50% of your plate being fruit and veg.

My dd is a waif and we have a from-scratch meal most dinner times and she eats huge amounts of fruit and veg so I don’t really mind her eating rubbish too much it’s just the message it sends when 75% of the food choices are less healthy, who has the willpower to turn down junk food at that age?

I couldn't agree more with this comment.
It's almost cultural.

In a circle: supermarkets are absolutely shit, peer pressure and what is easily available.

I don't think the blame needs to rest solely with the government. The manufacturing industry is chucking out rubbish food, the supermarkets are bombarding customers with rubbish food, there's so much of it everywhere.

Individuals have to take responsibility and, unfortunately, it is more time consuming to use fresh / frozen plain ingredients and prepare or cook from scratch.

And, absolutely, children are influenced so much once they get to around 5-7 years of age and from then on, it gets worse and worse. Colourful, sweet, salty, all the bad stuff is what they want because they tasted it and they liked and it is relatively easy to get so they start increasing consumption of the bad food items.

Personally, I'd completely ban about 85% of foods currently available in food shops.

Drinks as well, apart from milk.

My daughter is 14 months. I tried really hard to avoid giving her UPF. Yes I even baked my own bread. Now she’s at nursery and while the menu is usually pretty good (home made curries/fish pie/soup etc) she has also had sausages, baked beans, scones, birthday cake, bagels, toast, breakfast cereal.

it’s almost impossible to avoid it even for very little ones.

At the end of the day, UPF is far cheaper than "real" food. Unfortunately price is the most important thing to a lot of people - maybe due to necessity, maybe not.

Is it though?
Bag of potatoes, a carton of eggs, beans and frozen mixed veg - under a £1 pp meal there for a mash and fried egg dinner with lots of veg.
Pasta with a ton of tomatoes, frozen veg and grated cheese. Under a £1 pp again.

Granted, fresh veg, fish and meat is more expensive.

@FrancescaContini they actually have done studies which showed that packed lunches were higher in UPF than school lunches, that’s not my opinion it’s just fact. Most people don’t have the time or energy to make everything from scratch for packed lunch so resort to UPF bread, ham, crisps, yoghurts, cereal bars etc.

The majority of schoolchildren's lunch was defined as UPFs, with secondary school children having higher median intakes of UPFs than primary school children (78% kcal [IQR 58-95] vs 73% kcal [55-86). School meals were associated with a lower median UPF intake than packed lunches for primary school children (61% kcal [IQR 44-75] vs 81% kcal [71-91])

source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36929954/