What does a healthy menu look like? Examples please!

[Thesunrising]

My child's school has an award/badge for healthy eating, but on the face of it, much of the lunch menu looks anything but.

Meals include fish fingers and chips, pizza, macaroni cheese, hot dogs and there is always a choice of a jacket potato with either cheese or beans. Main courses are usually served with optional portion of vegetables.

Puddings seem to be mainly cake/ice cream based such as pineapple cake, shortbread and milkshake, chocolate crispie cake, fruit crumble. Twice in a three week cycle they have a fruit and yoghurt option.

None of this feels particularly 'healthy' or worthy of recognition, but perhaps I'm being unreasonable?

Can anyone link me to a schools menu please that offers something a bit more healthy as I'd like to take this up with our school, but go armed with some useful examples of alternatives. This is for reception/year 1 if that makes a difference.

are the meals shipped in or cooked on location? If shipped in look at other provides. You may see the menus on
School websites.

Ours is the same. Claims to be great but is the pits. Ours claim to meet nutritional standards but when I researched them, the nutritional standards were incredibly low. Everything is cheap white wheat

Although it may not look healthy it may have well been tweaked to provide healthier versions of foods known to be popular with children. If it is a local authority state school they will have to comply with the guidelines set out by the Childrens food trust which set limits on the number of times things like fried food and processed meats can be served. I have a feeling academies may be exempt though.

They cook it on site and it's just a regular primary - not an academy. I sort of understand that they are required to pump up the calories for growing children etc, but the puddings in particular seem just stodgy and full of refined sugar.

If you look at some of the sample recipes on the link I gave above it shows how they make the desserts compliant with the guidelines.

Thanks. The link to the standards is useful. Some of them are questionable, for example tea, coffee and hot chocolate are all considered acceptable and I don't understand why low fat milk and yoghurt is always specified - 5 and 6 year olds surely don't need low fat versions of anything!

Doesn't sound too healthy to me. Meals this week in my local school (abroad) are fish soup with Rye bread and cucumber, potatoes with pork sauce and veggies, veggie pasta bake with green salad, oven baked sausage with mashed potatoes and salad and some kind of tex mex meal with cabbage salad. No puddings at the all. All carefully made to nutrition riles balanced out over the week.

http://www.schoolfoodplan.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/School-Food-Standards-Guidance-FINAL-V3.pdf

There are clear guidelines for calorie content and you will probably find the puddings are sugar free

Yes - don't be fooled by the name of the pudding - it's probably nothing like how you'd make it.

Yes I agree about children not necessarily needing low fat everything and I think the benefits they gain from using sugar free products are outweighed if they are replaced with products crammed full of artificial sweeteners.

That's why the school food guide suggests honey and fruit to add sweetness not artificial products

Ours is 90% cheap white wheat, low in quality protein (it's almost all processed)

Ours isn't TOO bad. A lot of stodge...often sausages, pizza, breaded fish etc, but the cakey puddings are all sugar and sweetener free, and use apple sauce/banana/beetroot/pumpkin instead. Sweet potatoes seem to be replacing potato in most things.

www.schoolfoodplan.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/School_Food_Standards_140911-V2e-tea-towel.pdf

This company provides my DC's menu. As these things go, I think it's quite healthy.

www.mycaterlink.co.uk/lbi/downloads/menu_152.pdf