School dinners - please sir can I have some more!!!!

To be honest I don’t recognise the negative comments in this thread either. The food at the primary ours attend is excellent. What I’ve seen at open days and had reported to me from friends who are already experiencing food at secondaries in the borough the same if not far better (bigger schools, far more opportunities for choice).

The initial news story linked in the OP doesn’t sound particularly tragic. I’m sure journalists could find far worse if they tried a bit harder. Relatively unusual for a thread in NP&E to be prompted by criticism of the Labour controlled Welsh government though. Makes a bit of a change.

Thats not too bad. Not the worst I've seen. Worse than many of the others though of course. Namely, the "meat" cylinders with beans and the concentrated apple juice carton. I never really had school dinners when in Secondary, always took a lunch with me. In Primary (early 90s) I remember the dinners being pretty good, usually meat + veg, all just about fresh. At college I went to a sixth form (early 00's) and so it shared a canteen with the rest of the school. It had a good selection but of course I'd go for chips, pasties, beans, pie etc plus a piece of cake. A veritable beige rainbow of food. At the time, it didn't really matter, I was swimming 10 times a week at an average of 70,000m a week. So I just ate whatever was good and lots of it.

However....none of this was free. I remember taking "dinner money" in the later paper docket thing every week. Subsidised I am sure, but not entirely free. At college it was a pre-paid dinner card.

My mum worked in the canteen as a dinner lady for my primary school in the 1970s and used to despair that they put the cabbage and carrots on to boil for an hour before serving.
I did like the pink custard though

My school dinners were prepped and cooked in school premises, good fresh wholesome food of two courses. Any left after all servings made was then ‘who would like seconds’? We also were offered a third pint of milk daily.

I recall talking to a doctor when my dad was in hospital and the response was along the lines of:

1) Sick people like bland (esp elderly patients)
2) Nutrition is less important than energy in (short term) recovery

Essentially it was better for the patient to have eaten something and be full than to have not eaten.

Now I don't agree with it but I can see the logic. It doesn't matter if an 8 year old eats just sausage and chips for a week. It would matter for a month or two.

Fair and it's good to know that they do occur

Afraid I still think, and it is anecdotal I'm not even going to pretend I've researched, you're more likely to see something pretty grim than you are something even approaching some of the examples you seem to see in other countries when it comes to quality and freshness.

It's not limited to school meals the hospital anecdotes seems equally valid but we seem to have a real thing for heating up low cost low quality processed food.

I also don't think for one second it's a "colour" thing. I suspect that may make a difference to the extent of school meals i.e. who gets them but I don't think a change there would automatically result in a change or improvement in quality just quantity.

It just seems to be a cultural thing where I don't see us waking up one day and taking, say, the Japanese approach to the issue.

But herein lies a fairly sizeable problem.

Zero evidence of anything, but you're sure you're right. Based on a link with some photos of what we do not know

Now if others did that on other topics, you'd be going nuts with "the state of it"

There will 100% definitely be some schools serving st food. That's on the head/whoever runs their catering service.

Bad reviews are more likely to be shared online than good ones so it isn't a surprise that you only see the bottom quarter of school meals.

I think the big problem, and I understand that this is the case at most of our local schools, is that the portion sizes are all the same so it doesn't matter if you're a 5 year old in reception or an 11 year old about to leave primary you're getting the same amount of food.

My kids’ school, the menu looks similar. But it is all prepared in a central kitchen off site. Which means they are basically ready meals, which are only possible with emulsifiers, stabilisers and preservatives. They also like add to sugar laden ‘healthy’ snacks such as fruit yoghurt and flapjacks.

It’s got a chance to be good if its all prepared from fresh ingredients, from scratch onsite. Even something innocuous as a gravy, if you look at the list of ingredients on the instant versions, that stuff isn’t good for you. The devil is in the details.

I’d much rather my kid eat burger and chips that was cooked from scratch, including the bread roll, than a healthy sounding ready meal pumped with artificial ingredients.