What do you feed your kids if they have a school dinner?

squeakysue

My ds is 11 and has a school dinner and a full dinner in the evening, he is always hungry, there's no way I could get away with giving him a light meal. He has always been the same all the way through school, loves his food. Dd is 9 and has packed lunch and she is always starving after school too, they both cost me a fortune!!

fuddle

My children take a very healthy and varied packed lunch to school and have a hot meal of an evening. My eldest is underweight so looking forward to the holidays to try get some more cals into her.

I intend doing this by having breakfast as normal, fruit/popcorn snack mid morning as they would at school. A 'picnic' plate replicating a packed lunch (sandwich, boiled egg, chunk of cheese, popcorn (self popped, sweetened with butter and honey) raisins, fruit salad. Carrot sticks/bread sticks/cucumber sticks with hummus/dip mid afternoon for them to graze on while crafting/colouring. frozen bananas on lolly sticks or homemade flapjack/fairy cakes at 3, then main meal as normal and horlicks/porrige/weetabix/ rice pudding for supper.

I only ever shop for ingredients. I have all that stuff in as standard and lucky that I have the luxury of time to prepare it all but I think giving the opportunity to graze between meals during the day is a good way of staving off the hunger and a good way of making sure they're not clawing at the biscuit tin in desperation of a carb/sugar kick.

But... my eldest is underweight so don't take what I say as gospel lol

Frogletina

The school I went to did not allow me to have a packed lunch and there was no way I could go home as it was an hour away so I had to have school dinners. I was a vegetarian too - anyone fancy fried egg and cabbage!

My brother's school allowed packed lunches so he always had one.

In the evening my mother always cooked a full meal with a pudding. I loved having two cooked meals a day. It was only at the weekends that we had what I would call a proper 'tea', although perhaps I should use the terms 'high tea' for the meals in the week and 'afternoon tea' for the weekend teas. That's a discussion in itself.

Fruball

My girls have a school dinner most days and I still cook in the evenings.

The portions are tiny and my girls come back from school really hungry. We are not even out of the gate when they ask what is for dinner!

I would love to be able to just give them a light tea but they would still be hungry.

ska_lover

The school my son went to, for the brief time he had school dinners before I moved him on to packed lunches, the school dinners were very poor.

Depending on what 'sitting' his class was on if his class was called last there was not much there that he could eat - as he is vegetarian and no real provision was made for this - it was either chips or chips and if you were last, the chips were gone.... He was always starving by 3.30pm. Mind you, he is 20 now, so hopefully school dinners have improved these days

I hear on my local news that the government are thinking of removing a parents choice to send their children with packed lunches now - I am so glad that I do not have school aged children these days, as I would refuse to adhere to this. I hear a lot of friends discussing the 'lunchbox police' where dinner ladies bawl out children who's parents may have put a penguin chocolate in to their pack ups. It is shocking that dinner ladies seem to think they have the right to bawl out children for eating what their parents have provided them- unhealthy or not..

Foxn86

My son has a school dinner however this is at 1pm during the day lunch time. He gets a fully cooked meal more or less every night for his dinner around 5 hours later. I think its compulsory they are growing and need fed decent food.

I cant see what my son is easting at school kids love to get out to the playground so I would be horrified to think my son was only having one measly school lunch as his main meal.

Just my opinion but I think kids should have 3 proper good meals a day and if hungry in between, fruit or some treats now and again.

ash28

At our grandson's school (he lives with us) the school meals are pretty good and vegetarians are pretty well catered for.

He is in year 7 and started off the year by taking a packed lunch, then he wanted a school dinner, then he wanted a packed lunch.

The school uses Parentpay....so I could see exactly what he was buying for his lunch or not.....he stopped buying lunch and was coming home having had nothing to eat from breakfast. He said it was because it took too long and he wanted to play with his friends. He is having packed lunches at the moment.

He doesn't always eat everything but unlike our own children brings what he hasn't eaten home - they used to throw it away and tell us they'd eaten it.

However, as he leaves for school at 7:50 am and doesn't get in until 4:15 we thought that was far too long at his age without something substantial to eat.

So I asked him what he would like in his packed lunch - it was a sandwich and a bag of crisps along with a bottle of flavoured water. I found it was absolutely pointless and a waste of money to send him with what I considered a healthy lunch....only to throw it in the bin when he got home - and that happened almost every day.

With his smaller lunch (which he has at second break and not lunch time) he generally eats it.

He is absolutely ravenous when he gets in, as you can imagine. He usually has a sandwich and a piece of fruit when he gets in and a cooked meal at dinner time. It's only because the school uses parentpay that we knew he wasn't eating at school.

We have tried everything from bribing to threats to ignoring it.......but nothing seems to make any difference. Though he does have a decent breakfast in the morning.

In the junior school the children were quite well monitored during lunch times but at the high school (at least his) they aren't. I'd be happy if he had a bowl of chips.....and I know it's not healthy.

I'm sure he can't be the only one like this, but I'm at bit of a loss on what to try next.....he can't come home.....it's 7 miles away.

Willowpop

My daughter is at primary school and takes packee lunches as she didn't like many of the school dinners..
But, when she goes to secondary school then she might want to go back to eating food cooked on site rather than taking her own. If I am honest..if she chooses a bowl of cheesy chips each day for her lunch I'm not gonna worry too much. She has a healthy breakfast and will get a good meal at home in the evening..a bowl of chips at lunchtime-whilst not ideal-won't kill her. Plus, she will soon get fed up of chips after a while and choose other things.

When she did have school dinners, I would still cook a hot meal in the evening as well. 2 hot meals a day for kids is perfectly acceptable I think.

sofababe

My granddaughter aged 5 lives with me (my daughter does also), and she has a school lunch on the days its something she likes. The county council uses a rolling 4 week menu (2 choices each day, 1 is veggie) which is given to the parents at the beginning of term so you know exactly what they are going to be having on any given day. There is also fresh fruit, salad, yogurt and fresh bread available every day. They are supervised at lunchtime so if she wasn't eating we'd soon be told.
The school she goes to is tiny, only just over 50 children so the meals are cooked in a nearby middle school kitchen and delivered in time for midday. Each child "orders" what they want and the exact number of meals is delivered so they can't run out.
If this daft plan to ban packed lunches is brought in then GD would starve to death. She is a very fussy eater, though she's getting a little better, but would never cope with some of the more exotic menus.
Mostly we give her a cooked meal but sometimes she's so tired she just wants to graze or have a snacky tea. We're just glad if she eats anything so we don't really mind what it is. She certainly doesn't eat rubbish/junk though.


http://www.eats-catering.co.uk/page/primary-schools

pigpen

I do a cooked meal in the evening because if I didn't then I wouldn't get a cooked meal, neither would OH or the toddlers or the older ones who just grab one f the 'grab bag' type dinners at school.

I just give the ones who have had the school hot dinner a smaller portion.. though they usually clear the plate at school, often have seconds and have toast/cereal when they get in from school then still devour all their dinner..

When they were packed lunches they would often be upset when they came out of school because they were so hungry, despite the quantity I managed to ram in their lunch boxes... sandwiches, pasta, fruit, cheese chunks etc.

However, I don't feel quite so bad if they have beans and toast or jacket potato with cheese for dinner knowing they have had a decent lunch at school..

The LA lunch menu was changed when they offered 1 day a week the 'options' of meat curry or vegetable curry so they had LOTS of hungry children because very few would eat it..