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?

Try not to tar all school meals with the same brush. They are not all the same! The company I work for adere to the School Food Plan and offer a varied nutritious menu, but unfortunately kids still throw the veg in the bin and in some schools anything nutritious outside the "junk style norm" isn't ordered much and looked at with suspicion.

I work in preschool and we regularly have children bring food flasks. I'm not convinced they stay a safe "storage" temperature though!

genuine question, your 4 year old reception class child takes this for lunch at school?

If you don’t like the menus send your child with a packed lunch. They don’t have to be expensive to make up and they could always help choose what goes in them so you know it will get eaten.

school dinners have been like this for years. I was at primary in the 80s, we had pizza (big squares of it) potatoes croquettes, curry and rice (no veg) mash, jackets - only veg I remember were peas, often beans were served, even with the curry…dessert was a widget of sponge or a jelly with a blob of whipped cream and an Angelica on it.

i know lots of kids do like pitta and hummus and veggie sticks but honestly I feel like suggesting it for lunchboxes is like a code for “I’m a food snob” 🤣🤣🤣

These are office lunches! And please don’t send milk, I remember milk in a thermos, my mum said it stayed cold, I beg to differ 🤮

Hi@Wigglewigglewitch 😊 Mine, not yet as still at home. I did, though. Was very common to bring lunch from home and a thermos with something hot/cold. You can put a cold pack in the lunch bag/box if needed to help keep something cold (my mum put ice in a zip bag and wrapped a small tea-towel around it).
As an athlete I've always packed healthy food to take with me to work/training sessions/hiking m/skiing etc. Has always been fine. Boiling water into thermos for a few minutes to heat it, dump out and add hot food then close 😊

Yup, you're being a snob. If you don’t want your child to eat the same as us plebs who can't afford anything else then make your own and stop whining.

Why not?

I feel like people are not understanding the concept of a thermos.

Genuinely perplexed why this is inconceivable and funny? Just offering a perspective. It's healthy and affordable. 🤷‍♀️
(If you really want a laugh I'd also get a hard boiled egg with a pinch of s&p in my lunch). 😛

I think you'll find there's always veg served just not mentioned specifically.

I appreciate that they are working with a ridiculously small budget but I wonder whether the people who design the menus have ever thought about scrapping the puddings and adding the money they would have spent on pudding to the vegetable budget. Kids don’t need pudding at lunch time that offers no nutritional value. I wouldn’t mind if the pudding was an apple but it’s normally some ultra processed crap!

My DS's school sounds fairly similar but they have a salad cart every day that the kids can help themselves too. There's sweetcorn, cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce and raisins. From what I hear, the raisins disappear quickly

Those lunches do sound crap and you are definitely not being snobby! The ones at my DC school are much better, one meat and one veggie option daily all served with two veg or there's an option of jacket potato or pasta. Fruit is always available. Now they take packed lunches as our FSM days are over but I never had a problem with them eating anything served at school. It all sounded delicious 😂

DD's school dinners are better than some of the menus mentioned here. At least 3 of the 5 meals a week sound pretty good (chicken curry, chicken/veg wraps, meatballs & rice served with green veg, cottage pie etc.).

DD refuses to eat the roast dinner as the meat is always tough and off-putting so she has a packed lunch that day and then often has a packed lunch on Fridays as it's basically junk food in a stodgy white bun which she doesn't like.

Ah, thought as much. Maybe come back in a few years when you've had a few children through the infants. The reality is often different from what you might imagine from the perspective of a parent of a younger child!

Tbh, as an adult I wouldn’t be wanting to eat those items everyday for lunch. Burger and chips, pizza etc would be a VERY rare and very naughty lunch. That’s main meal type food.

I was entitled to free school meals yet my mum still always made me a packed lunch except the odd term here and there when I requested to have school dinners to try it out.

just make the kid a packed lunch. It won’t cost that much if you plan it properly.

DD has not long finished the equivalent of Y2 I think (Scotland) and it sounds about right to me. They have to work within budgets and also go with what the kids will eat and in a short timeframe. She also had a much better variety of foods at nursery, but v carb (potato) heavy now at school. For us, nursery was a much smaller setting, so school has to be scaled up, and some of the bigger kids in the upper end of primary will need a lot more lunch.

She gets a hot lunch 4 days a week, of the 8 day rota there will tend to be pasta once and potatoes on the other 7 days. If the pasta is macaroni it comes with potatoes 🤪 the other meals will be something like a mini roast, mince and potatoes, meatballs and potatoes, occasionally fish cakes, breaded fish with potatoes and veg, breaded chicken with potatoes and beans, jacket potato with cheese and beans. We do get veg specified on each days menu, and I know she gets some on her plate. As others have said, they do get a pudding offered every day, normally a cake, but they could also have a yoghurt and occasionally fruit salad which my DD will often pick.

We do have a lot of veg at home so I’m not fussed. I’ve no idea what I’d cook to feed that many kids. I wish they’d do rice occasionally, to mix up the carbs, but that’s probably tricky to keep hot.

@SkySecret why is it rare and naughty to eat junk at lunch but ok as a main ,eat?

@GonnaGetGoingReturns that menu looks great! Better than DD's school dinners which are similar but not quite as interesting as these.

No one expects "fancy food" in a state school. And since when has healthy food been "fancy food"? Some of us just want our children to eat a healthy diet. Not this processed shit that is fuelling the obesity and diabetes crisis.

Most schools have a salad bar which isn't advertised and although they advertise the dessert, they always have fruit available or fruit platter for the kids tonoick from.
Very unusual that you are getting to pick their meals. I work in a school and teachers like the children to choose but are aware of things they arjt allowed for religious reasons or allergies etc.

Yeah, I'm not keen at all on the options at my child's but I know they've got insanely shit budgets etc. so it's just something I leave (plus, I make sure we eat pretty well/varied foods at home.

The thing that DOES actually piss me off is how there's a pudding every single day. Yes, there is a fruit option (sometimes cheese and crackers is offered) but my kid now thinks afters is normal every single day for every meal. I've got a sweet tooth but er, no? I thought school would do pudding as a Friday thing, and fruit on the other days.

Generally people eat their largest meal in the evening, that therefore being the most “calorie dense” meal of the day. Two calorie dense meals a day is going to lead to weight gain and/or other health problems.

I wouldn’t want to eat burger and pizza every single day for main meal either, not the healthiest option, however if it was my only calorie dense meal of the day that’s better than eating 1000+ cals at lunch, then again in the evening!

I think it’s the thought of a 4 year old opening a thermos themselves and trying to scoop out soup without it going everywhere. I used to send my daughter to nursery with a thermos with hot pasta, rice etc but there was staff on hand to help her open it whereas at school the children are more independent.