school lunch rip off

seven-day-weekend

If the children don't like the school meals they are not obliged to have them.

I think I have posted before, that when I was a dinner lady (in a secondary school), the most popular options were things like pizza or sausage and chips, there was always loads of salad and jacket potatoes left over and the children with lunchboxes would quite frequently come into the dining hall, throw their sandwiches away untouched and buy chips (or very occasionally swop their sandwiches for somone else's chips).

I think the schools do the best they can with tiny budgets, you have to try to get a good balance between what the children will eat and what is healthy.

The other option of course is for it to be like when I was at school, where there was ONE main course, (plus a veggie option you could have ONLY if you were a veggie), and no lunchboxes or going out. Therefore you ate what was there or went hungry. It was good food too, usually meat/fish and two veg and a pudding.

mirrorimage0

hiya, i work as a cook 2 in a senior school kitchen and we do have a variety of meals offered each day, 3main meals as well as salads, pizzas at break, wraps, sandwiches, yoghurts, fruit and veg, i certainly feel the children can get a good variety of food from our menu at a reasonable cost, but i also feel the portion control on some of the things should be slighlty bigger,

i have two boys in infant and junior school and they very rarely have dinners as they alwys come home so hungry, i have been to a few of the junior schools on training days and feel the portion sizes are very small and not enough choice for those that come in at the end of serving, but as said before its all about costings, and hiting strict budgets as well as trying to be healthy, and strict guidlines about where we buy our fruit, veg, meats etc from for instance our veg supplier last month was charging £1.85 for a cucumber, our bananas are 40p each and apples are 30p.

in my kitchen we are doing things like making the homemade cakes stretch a bit further, ie instead of getting 10 out of a batch we get 13 for instance and that way we can put extra veg and bigger dinner portions onto the plates without affecting our costings so much.

im quite happy with my boys choosing what they like when they are in senior schools as i know the choices and sizes etc, but there is no way i would have them on school dinners in infants and juniors.

DeeDee74

:rolleyes: my dd school dinner are terrible,

thay are always running out of food only last week she had 3 chicken nuggets and pea's nowt else!!!!:eek:
must say Ive seen the portions and thay are tiny!!!!

she did have a free Caterpillar in with her salad a while ago.
the school was most unhelpful so Ive complained to out side of them now.

tori.k

i gave my kids school dinners every winter until last year as i prefered they had a cooked meal during the colder months, i gave it up when they change catering companys as my youngest (only one left in primary school) started to come home starving they would always run out of food and more often or not he would end up with a odd shot meal of what was left of the two main meals, most of us complained (as the school works on the older classes served last) sadly the school wouldnt do anything about it as the county council sorts the school catering, so they lost a lot of revenue as not many of the years 4/6 have school dinners, even a friend that gets free school meals gives her lad a pack up, im glad mine starts the college in sept their meals are great, and cooked fresh on site rather than the warmed up trays that the infant schools are getting

Curlywurli

Sometimes the schools know there is a problem, such as the cook not cooking what's on the menu but what she likes to cook instead or only cooking three portions of something and saying it's because they don't like it, well they wouldn't if they don't get to try it would they! Sometimes it's down to the council though and if they just don't listen or don't do anything about it there's not a lot that can be done.

jenhug

at our school the meals are pretty dire too. microwaved jacket spuds, if its hamburger day they are only allowed to give half a bun with the burger or they would have too many carbs! Chips are cooked until they are dried up inside and so are the roast potatoes. Even my daughter who is like a human dustbin complains. She often ends up with what is left, and it isn't always a full portion size either.

Its no wonder out of a school of over 300 only 40 children have school dinners regularly.

dizziblonde

They vary massively - and it's quite funny when I go in to cover teachers, do the dinner register and suddenly there's like 20 out of the class having school dinners one day compared to the usual 10 or so - I tend to ask "anything nice for dinner today by any chance" and it's always pizza day so they all get school dinners.

I've seen some fab school cooks - one guy even joined in with the kids making Greek food and got kicked out of the kitchen to join our Greek dancing by the dinner ladies - he was Greek and fab with cooking and fab with the kids, and some dreadful ones - when our old school cook went off sick the numbers taking school meals doubled among both the kids AND the staff.

Compared to how they were a few years ago though they've improved massively - I remember my teaching practice school (so we're talking back in 2000) used to serve grey hotdogs and hamburgers - it turned my stomach walking through the hall to the staffroom on a lunchtime as they looked (and smelt) so vile. These days if I was organized enough to have money on me to pay for a staff meal generally I would do - but I'm never that organized on a morning!