school lunch rip off

aliasojo

Just found this thread...this is a huge bugbear of mine at the moment. My girl's school dinner costs £1.65 so not quite as expensive as some of you.

She is in a smallish Highland primary school so not as if they are having to feed the 5000, yet almost every day they very quickly run out of things and the kids who have the misfortune to have a teacher who keeps them until the last minute, often dont eat because they only have one option and it's invariably disgusting.

They always run out of whatever is supposed to go on the baked potato and the potato itself is so overdone that the flesh has shrivelled away to nothing. The meat they use is so fatty and full of gristle that most of the kids wont eat it (dont blame them).

My girl is a wee petite thing and only has small portions at the best of times but even by her standards these meals are not filling.

School dinners are atrocious now. We do get the monthly menu home...all brightly printed with lovely pics of fresh fruit and veg.....funny how the actual meals bear no resemblance though. :rolleyes: I was very shocked when I saw that little plastic tray with a tiny dollop of 'something' in one of the compartments and a biscuit in the other.

Daughter tends to be home dinners or packed lunch now.

Aspiring

bride_on_a_budget wrote: »

- - - -
well i went shopping and for £10 (usual weekly school lunch cost) i managed to buy : 1 pk 6 brown rolls, 1 pk wholemeal mini pitta breads, 1 pk ready cooked chicken pieces, 6pk frube yoghurts, 1 pk 6 healthy crips bites, 6 small cartons fruit juice, 4 carrots, pk mini cocktail sausages.

came in under £10 with some of it left for next week. - - -

Do also take account of the fact the staff need to be paid a wage for the time they spend "shopping", cooking and serving those school dinners too; plus the energy costs in cooking the food.

One other thing you may want to consider when you look at those foods you have bought, do have a look at the salt content and sugar content on the items and work out if they exceed the recommended daily amount for a child. Even foods labelled "healthy", despite having a lower salt/sugar/fat amount, won't work out "healthy" if combined with other high sugar/salt/fat foods.

So, if you are planning a packed lunch of:-
1 mini pitta (or roll) filled with ready cooked chicken pieces
1 Frube
1 pkt "healthy" crisp bites
mini cocktail sausages
1 carton of fruit juice
1 carrot

calculate all the amounts of salt/fat/sugar - you may be surprised just how much it goes over the daily amounts recommended when combined with breakfast and evening meal.

Also, from a moneysaving point of view - don't forget to look at the price you pay per 100g for those cooked chicken pieces For example, if they cost you £1.99 per 100g, do remember that is equal to £19.90 per kg
It would be more cost effective to buy a chicken, cook it, cut all the meat off and use that (freezing it in portions to make it last, obviously) for any sandwiches/rolls/pitta fillings.

an1179

bride_on_a_budget wrote: »

his school do rotate the classes so each class gets go in 1st but we find this happens when it is a rubbish food day ie lentil casserole/ 3 bean chilli.

thanks for all of your comments
bride

Have they tried asking parents to order the previous week or is that not practical?

angela110660

annie_d wrote: »

Sometimes in establishments i find that the menu is not actually reflected in the food served.

When my daughter was still at primary school we got the menu sheets home and for a while in Year 6 she had the dinners as all her friends did. However, when she kept coming home saying that the thing she had ordered on the day was not there when she came to the counter - I told her that she would have packed lunch from them on. One meal I remember they had no potatoes left (!) so her and a few others were given a bread roll instead. Ridiculous. The meals were cooked on the premises too so how they could not allow for enough potatoes beats me. Because they were the Year 6 they often had to go last sitting so all the greedy younger ones obviously ate all the spuds (and the pies!!)

morganb

Mojisola wrote: »

This wouldn't be enough for the 10 year old boys I know!

That wouldn't even be enough for the four- and six-year old little DSs that I know!!!

bride_on_a_budget

an1179 wrote: »

Have they tried asking parents to order the previous week or is that not practical?

we did ask the school if we can order food but they said they did it as a trial and it did not work. i dont know why!

well he has gone in for his roast today but taking a packed lunch tomorrow.
i'm going to buy a whole chicken next week and he can have that cooked in pasta or rolls.
bride

sophie131

purple_82 wrote: »

It's because of Jamie oliver that school dinners are the misery that they are.

Don't get me wrong if schools were providing smiley faces and twizzlers I wouldn't be best pleased (did any actually do that?) but some of the menus are terrible, especially for fussy eaters.

.

My school were 'cooking' that up until last year when I left. Yes there was a veggie option (only allowed if you WERE vegetarian) and one other option, so you were stuck with turkey twizzlers if you didn't like, the more often than not, curry!

melwright

jayII wrote: »

I'd buy a 'food flask' and give him pasta, homemade soup, and other simple hot meals in Winter, pasta salad etc in Summer. My DD loves pasta with a passion, but isn't keen on bread, so I used to keep a jar of Ragu in the fridge and make pasta n tomato sauce with cheese or ham some days, and soup other days. Quick cook pasta is a godsend! Hummus and veg sticks, with a scone and/or muffin are good too.

My son alternates between lunches and packed lunch, he loves both and they always have good selection. I'm with the food flask thing though as sandwiches every day can be dull!
We do pasta & soup in the food flask. Plus things like chicken drumsticks/pizza etc are good alternatives to sandwiches.

leiela

Well i have to admit after years of "trusting the school" on what my kids ate, i've started to ask the boy's on a daily basis what they had.

Yesterday it was fishfingers (1 finger), chips and beans, the day before sausage chips and beans????

I thought schools wern't allowed to feed kids chips every day anymore???! here i was naively thinking they where given good meals, when in actual fact it seems both boy's seem to flip bettween "something" with chips and sandwiches.

I went down to the school and asked them about the "salad bar" so many of you talk about, to see if my school offered salad, even if it was just abit on the side of a plate. There response "we used to do salad with sandwiches but the kids where just leaving it so we've stopped doing it now" ... gah.

I also asked about the "chips everyday" and they said yes there is usually a chips option but there is usually another option as well.

No offence, but i think there are alot of kids out there who would pick chips in preferance to anything else... personally i'd just rather it wasn't offered everyday. My kids like alot of food, they arn't especially fussy... but when given the choice chips usually win.

Also from talking to my sons i've gathered that the reason they have sandwiches so often is because unless your one of the first class's to go into lunch everything else is gone... i guess its easier to make sandwiches on the fly than actually make sure there is enough of the hot options for everyone???

Anyway watching thier food for a week i've decided to move them to packed lunches after half term it's abit more hassle and im not convinced it will end up cheaper but at least i know whats going in thier box and they get a hot meal in the evening anyway.

provista_2

I have been a school cook for a while and would sometimes be sent in to cover for cooks being off ill.
I was once sent to a school and cooked what was on the menu all carefully weighted out any plenty for everybody. When the rest of the staff arrived just before service they were amazed by the amount of food I had prepared.
I thought this was very strange as I had portioned everything out, but apparently the normal cook did things a little differently.
Children were allowed to chose what size portion they wanted saying small or normal.
So if a child said small they were given 2 pieces of ravioli, 2 potato wedges and veg if they wanted it.
I was appalled by this and reported the cook.
The food costs must have been much greater when I cooked as every child was given full portions everyday, after all that's what had been paid for.