School lunch rant - Would you complain?

Sublime_2

I've just read this whole thread with puzzlement. The TA should not be supervising school dinners if she doesn't understand what constitutes healthy food. I could understand if it was chocolates, and lots of stodge, but yours was a lovely packed lunch to be proud of.

Your lucky daughter getting HM houmous. Mine loves houmous, and guacamole btw, although not vegetarian.

The school dinners at my daughters school aren't bad, although "school dinnerly" iykwim. They don't serve macaroni cheese.

Instead the vegetarian option has the following; cheese and vegetable bake, vegetable grill, neapolitan bolognaise, spicy quorn pasta, jacket potatoes with either cheese & beans, or coleslaw & beans, spicy beanburger, quorn curry, vegetable cobbler etc. There is only one choice per day, but the menu plans are rotated every week, so the children don't get bored.

Not as healthy as your packed lunch, but better than macaroni cheese every day.

Zazen999

May I take this opportunity to just mention the Food For Life Partnership - perhaps some of these schools should join up, and start really looking at what they are serving their kids. And promote some growing on-site as well.

http://www.foodforlife.org.uk/

msb5262

May I take this opportunity to just mention the Food For Life Partnership - perhaps some of these schools should join up, and start really looking at what they are serving their kids. And promote some growing on-site as well.
quote from Zazen999, post #164

http://www.foodforlife.org.uk/

My school, as mentioned in my post #131 on page 7, is in the Food for Life partnership - hence recent improvements in school meal system!
MsB

Zazen999

msb5262 wrote: »

May I take this opportunity to just mention the Food For Life Partnership - perhaps some of these schools should join up, and start really looking at what they are serving their kids. And promote some growing on-site as well.
quote from Zazen999, post #164

http://www.foodforlife.org.uk/

My school, as mentioned in my post #131 on page 7, is in the Food for Life partnership - hence recent improvements in school meal system!
MsB

Glad to hear it!!!

I thought a few were, by the looks of the menus mentioned or discussed....

fletty

As a mother of 2 aged 6 and 4 and also a school cook I can see both sides to this story (although the TA handled it very wrong!). I work for the local authority who provide meals for a number of schools, each school with its own kitchen. Every year the cooks get together with the management teams and decide what sort of foods to put together for the next years 3 weekly menu cycle. It is so hard now to put together nutritious meals for the kids as everything has to be analyzed for it's nutritional values and has to contain the right amounts of certain vitamins , iron, calcium etc. You can plan meals as much as you like but most kids don't want to eat Hungarian goulash with roasted vegetable cous-cous and it quiet pains me when I've stood all morning preparing something to see it all end up in the slops at end of service.

Saying this my 6 year old DD is on packed lunch - she is a very picky veggie (I'm also a veggie and it was my daughters own choice to become vegetarian).
I would be livid if she came home with a note saying her packed lunch was unsuitable, it's my choice what i feed my child and I know what the children in her school should be having on hot dinners that day and will give her cakes and biscuits for 'pudding' just like the other children!!

My children also have to take there rubbish home in there lunch boxes i don't mind i can see what they leave and kids have phases where they love something for 3 weeks and then won't touch it with a barge pole!

On the whole I think school meals have improved a lot, Jamie did good things (although he was hated for a time). The kids are getting used to making healthy choices but it scares me how much my 6 year old goes on about somethings being 'bad foods' and 'totally unhealthy foods' - I don't think primary school children need to dwell on this and should be left to do what there goo at - being children!!!!!!

PolishBigSpender

fletty wrote: »

It is so hard now to put together nutritious meals for the kids as everything has to be analyzed for it's nutritional values and has to contain the right amounts of certain vitamins , iron, calcium etc.

Macaroni cheese hardly counts as food with high nutritional values.


It's crazy that the school can dictate people what they should give THEIR OWN CHILDREN to eat.

Indie_Kid

fletty wrote: »

My children also have to take there rubbish home in there lunch boxes i don't mind i can see what they leave and kids have phases where they love something for 3 weeks and then won't touch it with a barge pole!

You also won't have the problem my parents had when I was younger - I used to accidently throw spoons away.:o

babyshoes

I second the suggestion earlier in the thread of going in every morning and having someone QUALIFIED pre-approve your child's lunchbox, if you can't get a promise from them that they won't take her lunch box away again. Make it a real grind for them, hopefully you will then get reassurances that it won't happen again!

Ridiculous, really. Heard a story on the news recently that a child's cheese sandwich was removed because it didnt' contain any lettuce or tomato! !!!!!!!

poet123

babyshoes wrote: »

I second the suggestion earlier in the thread of going in every morning and having someone QUALIFIED pre-approve your child's lunchbox, if you can't get a promise from them that they won't take her lunch box away again. Make it a real grind for them, hopefully you will then get reassurances that it won't happen again!

Ridiculous, really. Heard a story on the news recently that a child's cheese sandwich was removed because it didnt' contain any lettuce or tomato! !!!!!!!

Sorry, but as a parent there is no one more qualified than me to decide what my child eats for lunch, I would certainly not hand over that responsibility to anyone else, or allow them to vet, or veto, my choices for my child.

DVardysShadow

poet123 wrote: »

Sorry, but as a parent there is no one more qualified than me to decide what my child eats for lunch, I would certainly not hand over that responsibility to anyone else, or allow them to vet, or veto, my choices for my child.

I don't think that is the point. The real point is to make yourself such a PITA, by making them justify everything they challenge, that they will give up and leave your child's lunch box alone.