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?

It sounds fairly standard and fairly crap - although as PPS say their will be veg on the side and the portions are tiny.

Packed lunches are an extra hassle. So it will come down to whether you have the time for that. There’s no reason she won’t eat them as long as they are nice.

It's a balance, isn't it. More variety and less % of the kids will eat it. Having worked in a school, they will probably serve some veg on the side which 90% of the reception children won't touch

I’m with you, that sounds very unhealthy. And they definitely shouldn’t have a dessert like that every day, totally unnecessary.

In my experience the food is often healthier versions of things like pizza so not as salty or fatty.

But honestly as it won't have much of an impact on her and she's getting nutritious food at home it's a bit of a non issue.

My child refused school and college dinners. I made packed lunch til he went to college, he made his own from 16 years onwards.

But imagine the outcry if the offering was what was described for a French school on another thread: grated carrot salad, cold lentil and onion salad… (both very cheap to make).

We’d be back to parents pushing chips through railings.

How much have we brought this on ourselves? As a society?

I’m intrigued to see what it is like at DD’s school when she starts next year. I know the hot food is via Lovefood Ltd-anyone have any experience of them?

It is cooked onsite and it’s a tiny school (about 60 kids 5-11) so it will be interesting to see what they get. It is an academy though.

You are not a snob!
It's shocking what they feed children at nurseries and schools.
Also shocking that most parents ok with it.

This is the example menu (link is not from our village school but it’s the same food provider at all the local primaries)
https://primarysite-prod-sorted.s3.amazonaws.com/uppingham-c-of-e-primary-school/UploadedDocument/b823c00d-4a21-4e20-bc9c-48b637096ff5/spring-summer-2023-main-menu.pdf

Same sort of menu at ours but fruit and veg or salad is also on offer. I’m sure your kid will get fruit and veg, they have to meet nutritional standards

Dts had a jacket potato and cheese with sweetcorn every day for the first term. Went onto packed lunches after that. The menu was pretty much the same as op has said.

They had to bring a break time snack that had to be fruit ir vegetable.

The portions are tiny and the same for a yR and a y6 and the deserts are usually all low sugar.

By y5 they were pretty much all on packed lunch.

The budgets are tiny. I think the French way of doing this is much better, the amount you pay works on a sliding scale depending on income and they seem to have enough budget to provide decent food.

There is normally veg as an option, ours can also have a roll of they want. I do a hot meal for tea with veg etc and fruit for pudding so off set what they have for lunch. My ds eats way better since he went to school and will try things more then he did before having school dinners so have seen a real benefit from that point of view.

Exactly!!!! So cheap to make healthy, nutritious food but parents still would ask for chips and crisp sandwiches.
Disappointing!

What you give as a packed lunch?

I ask as one of mine is packed lunch and eats pretty much the same thing every day! The other one is on dinners similar to those mentioned but they are still better than a ham wrap, crisps and cucumber sticks every single day!

I do get annoyed at how strict they are on lunchboxes though given the meals aren't really that healthy.

School meals in the UK are dreadful. Real Iceland style processed food

@Muminthebluecoat A few ideas:
bagel w salmon and cream cheese
pepper sticks
cocktail tomatoes
cheese
drink yogurth
carrot sticks and hummus

Yeah, like others have said - there's usually fruit/veg on the side, although whether the children will eat it is another story.

I think one benefit is that even though the food is relatively boring, it does expose them to food that many won't get at home. eg, I make the odd curry now, but while I love curry, I've never really been super comfortable cooking them so it's not something we have a lot unless we get a takeaway. So I liked that DS tried curry a f ew times at school dinners. They weren't exactly a vindaloo, but it was flavours he wasn't getting at home.

Our school now allows you to pick and choose what meals to order and that works for me - some days they have packed lunches and other days they have their favourite chicken burger or the turkey roast dinner or whatever.

Similar menu at our school but unlimited salad and fruit available.

I don't think any of the kids eat it though.

Yeah, I think they do tend to be quite fast food/carb based. I guess they have to balance healthy/variety with food that is more likely to be eaten. DS's school now use this company (not sure what the meals are actually like though as he prefers packed lunches now he's older); https://www.dolce.co.uk/content/uploads/2022/03/Summer-Menu_TRADITIONAL-scaled.jpg

I do remember DS having the Christmas dinner aged about 6 and me thinking "great, no need to cook tonight, will just do a sandwich or something..." then he very excitedly told me he'd eaten "carrots and stuffing!" for lunch. So a great menu is no guarantee your child will actually eat what you're hoping they will.

School dinners are dire here. Cooked centrally then dished out to the schools, so everyone is on the same menu. A couple of older schools which still have the big old style kitchens have opted out of the council system and make their own now.
My DC's were/are happy with a sandwich, biscuit and some fruit for lunch. I usually cook something decent for dinner, so I don't worry about it. They're all fit and healthy. I've never felt the need to get into competitive lunch boxing like some people on here.
(One of my dc's has a very limited list of acceptable foods and will have either ham or cheese sandwich. every. single. day. Since reception, now in yr 8)

I worked in a school kitchen for a while and although the staff did their absolute best with a tiny budget it was a filler and nothing else. Two tiny trees of broccoli sat under heat lamps does not make a nutritional addition. If you don’t want to do a packed lunch and you’re bothered about it, just send a bag of grapes, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber, whatever as a snack.

God I'd love to be as organised as you. You've given me a new goal for our food going forward though - 30 plants a week!

I agree with what you say about health and food.

OP, my children are both below two but I've looked at the two contenders for primary schools' menus on their website and they look awful, I immediately knew I'd have to do packed lunches!! I am sure the schools are doing the best with what they have, but I was so shocked by how processed and beige it was. And as for pudding every day, I just don't want that set up as the norm. We have pudding once a week as that's what I had growing up!

Schools have salad bars these days and free run in the fruit bowl so maybe when it doesn’t come with a veg option they assume kids will go to the salad bar?
saying that I don’t give my kids school dinners, the options are limited and very pudding heavy. Packed lunches don’t need to cost the earth today my boys have taken a falafel salad and a yogurt, nothing expensive.

I think the lunch offer sounds pretty rubbish tbh!
My kid's school (a normal state primary in an inner city area for reference) does always have a jacket potato option but it also has a really good range of things like veggie curry (lentils/chickpeas and fresh veg), stir-fries with tofu and fresh veg, jackfruit wraps, veg cottage pie (again with lentils and actual veg), bean chilli that sort of thing (my kids are veggie so I'm not sure what the meat/fish meals are like). They also always have a vegan option and a halal option (sometimes that is the jacket potato but not always!). Then on a Friday they have something like pizza and potato wedges/fishless fingers and chips. They have a salad bar as well that they can choose from on top of the hot part which has kid-friendly things like cucumber sticks, tomatoes, sweetcorn etc and they always get a piece of fruit alongside the dessert of yoghurt/jelly/cake whatever

Do you know who does the catering? Ours is still the local council and it's much better than the offer provided by outsourced companies imo