Am I being a food snob?

[Haventaclue2]

Hi,

DD is starting school in September and I have been sent the menus to chose her first months worth of lunches.

There are two jacket potato options, a meat dish and a veggie dish. There seems to be the same 6-7 meals: burger & potato cubes, pizza & potato cubes, lasagna, fish and chips, tomato pasta & garlic bread etc. Desserts are a cookie, ice-cream, yoghurt, chocolate mouse...

The veggie options sometimes include some veg but I was expecting more fruit and veg in general, some days there is no fruit or veg at all and mainly carbs? I expected some peas on the side or an apple for example?

I always planned for her to have a hot meal at lunch as mum friends have always said how expensive and a faff packed lunches are and most of it can left anyway where as at least she'll probably eat all of the hot meal?

Am I being a terrible snob? 😳

Obviously its only one meal a day so its not going to do her any harm but the food at her nursery is so different it just came as a surprise?

This sounds pretty standard for school meals to be honest. They have a very small budget and need to make sure they’re providing food that kids will eat.

you will probably find that there are vegetables though - our menu doesn’t list them but all meals come with veg on the side - peas/sweetcorn/baked beans usually. There is also fruit and yoghurt available every day as alternate puddings but again that
doesn't appear on the menu.

I think I would be disappointed too but DD is 3 so I’m not aware of what constitutes ‘standard’ school food these days

Same as a pp, fruit and yoghurt was available every day and all meals came with a few veg options they just weren't listed on the menu as they were available every day.

DD is also starting reception this year and is veggie. Parents choose the lunch at drop off every day.

It’s carbtastic. We had a transition day where we ate with them and the veg options were pizza or jacket and beans with chips or pasta on the side and vegetables or beans. There were 5 pudding options, 5! But the potions were tiny. And they have a salad bar the kids can choose from on the day with about 8 options including carrot sticks, quinoa and lettuce I think.

The snack is a piece of fruit or veg, often from the garden there. So I think it’s okay overall if heavy on the starch.

Mine is just going into reception and food options are equally as shit. Personally I think it's a joke especially given the 'rules' around packed lunch contents and really disappointing given how much is known these days on the impact of poor diets and long term health. We're in wales so meals are free which feels like it's forcing a lot of families to sign up to crap food options.

Sounds alright to me

What do you think will happen if you let her have this food for one meal a day? I mean this as a genuine question to help get some perspective.

I think the school food sounds bad. Not nutritious, not well-rounded and likely low quality and processed. I'd pack lunches myself. It's not difficult. Home made soups, chilli, curries, stews are dead easy. Add some steamed veg, mixed rice and fruit and milk/water. Treats on Fridays.
Just my opinion, fwiw. 🤷‍♀️

You’re not being a snob. That food sounds rubbish, I wouldn’t be happy my kid eating so much beige.

I thought jamie oliver fixed this anyway?!

Ours is the same although fruit and yoghurts are available everyday along with peas and sweetcorn of beans. It's fine budgets, school just do the best they can with the limited funds they have.

The puddings aren’t what you’d imagine. They are tiny, and made with no (or minimal) sugar. A lot of the baked puddings- cakes, cookies etc- are sweetened with puréed vegetables. I know this because DS found a lump of parsnip in a cake!

There will definitely be vegetables every day, there are food standards they have to meet. Except the food standards might not apply to academies I think. Not sure about that though.

I imagine the school is on a tight budget and doesn’t want the kids to go hungry so plays it safe with stuff the vast majority will eat. Puddings also aren’t as bad as they sound and are usually little to no added sugar sweetened with fruit. Veg will almost certainly be there even if it isn’t specifically listed. Honestly it’s fine. Send a fruit/veg snacks for mid morning. Do a healthy breakfast and dinner. Then pizza etc really isn’t a big deal.

The main problem is the blind belief in bulking with carbs instead of protein and vegetables. Until the guidance changes, school meals will be stuck in the past (or the pasta 😆)

Yanbu my dc got the option of pasta every day and of course that’s what they chose! So they ate pasta every day for lunch except Fridays where it was fish and chips.

It’s just crap food.

I'm a teacher and school dinners are utter shit.

Genuinely hard pushed to find a vegetable in our canteens.

Pasta pot with tomato sauce.

Panini with scrape of filling.

On "roast dinner days" most kids have genuinely a tray with three limp roasties and a splash of gravy. No protein and no actual veg.

But it's fine, cos there's no sugar or salt...

My daughter says you can have salad or vegetables with anything you ordered.
Apparently a jacket potato with beans and cucumber is her favourite 🤮😂

Our school lunches are dreadful - they sound very similar to what you’ve described above OP. Mostly carb-based. In practice, most children aren’t actually eating them either; there’s always a sandwich option and the majority of DD’s Reception class are regularly choosing that over the pizza and pasta.

Having previously worked in schools I knew that the lunches were unlikely to be great, and they’re only deteriorating as budgets are cut to the bone and ever cheaper ingredients are being used. DD (5 and just finishing Reception) has had packed lunches from the outset, and as the year has progressed more and more of her friends have followed suit. Her school swapped to a supposedly ‘better’ provider a few months ago after the original provider went bust, but things don’t seem to have meaningfully improved. The final straw for one of DD’s friends who has recently swapped was the ‘chicken sausage hot dog’…

DP and I are both quite concerned about ‘beige food’ and UPFs, so barring any dramatic changes DD is likely to stay on packed lunches for the foreseeable.

School meals are awful. my DC has chips most days and sometimes the veg is 2 carrot sticks. We are sending packed lunches now unfortunately it is a faff but they dislike a lot of the junk food like burgers, chips and fish fingers so it’s not worth spending the money.

If this is all you have to worry about you are very lucky. She'll be fine.

Jacket potato, beans cheese and cucumber is one of my fav meals!!

My ds refused any notion of school dinners - even when they were free in KS1 he never took one 😂 dds had them twice a week when they were small (annoyingly before the days of fsm for ks1!) on their chosen days and they were unscathed.
I worked at the school and saw the dinners though, I wouldn’t have eaten them myself, they didn’t look good 🙈 and the portion sizes for your small aged 7 kid would be exactly the same as the portion for a bigger aged 11 kid, made sense on many levels but not at all on others. So much food scraped into the bins at the end, people must have thought their kids had ‘eaten a proper hot meal’ at lunch and just given something like a sandwich for dinner…

As a school cook in a JMI, we hate it as much as you!

My new company is awful to work for, their recipes don't work or are bloody disgusting.

We cooks are doing the best with what we're given if it turns up.

I can say in my school they have 2 veg a day, and a "salad bar" with whichever option is chosen.

Pudding option is fruit or pud of the day.

And we are not allowed to change your child's order either , so if they don't like it, tough. we hate it

Our school menu is way better than this. But I don't think it's common. The lunches are prepared at school, not by a provider. I would be unhappy as well with this menu, OP. Not sure I would have the courage to prepare packed lunches though!