School dinners

[oldjerry]

My kids (now ex)school,is in a small rural village,has a decent size playing field and about a 110 kids,fairly typical for a rural area.The recent thread on childhood food memories has led me to further utopian flights of fancy......Now the school dinners are 'cooked' at a secondary school 5 miles away,and brought in by taxi,as are several other schools in the area,the fact that they're god awful isn't really relevant here,why cant they be cooked on site? Armed forces cooks can easily cook for these numbers in far more difficult conditions and arent catering colleges awash with Jamie inspired recruits?,and at the drop of a hat(or crane) a mobile building pops up stuck on the end of a school.It cant be beyond the wit of some designer to build a small catering module that would work like a portakabin.
Then incorporate cookery into the curriculum,grow a bit of food in raised beds on the playing fields............Damn,I just woke up!

[boboff]

The costs of equiping and staffing a kitchen producing food for £2 a pop are not commercial Jerry. Out of 110 kids 50 would probably have lunch, that is £500 a week say. If they made 25% GP, then thats £125 to pay Staff for say 15 hours a week, plus Overheads and repairs.

No money in it at this scale, therefore no one can be arsed.

[Mrs H]

Oj ur living my life!!!!! ;). This cracks me up. Finley is at the little rural school, there are 47 kids in the whole school and dinners like urs come 5miles from the secondary school. I'd just like to add also god awful!!! Now the kitchen in Finns school isn't huge but put a proper cooker in and and you could prepare 47 dinners no problem, fresh, tasty, wholesome food. I am still jumping threw hoops for the board so as I can build a vege plot on the spare acre that they have currently unused. I mean, growing a carrot? A child may loose an arm doing that!! Health and safety protocol gone mad!!
Maybe I look at life threw rose tints but I don't understand why dinners can't be prepared onsite. I'd be prepared to volunteer on a rota system to prepare them.
Maybe we should be writing to Jamie!!!! Xx

[Mrs H]

The costs of equiping and staffing a kitchen producing food for £2 a pop are not commercial Jerry. Out of 110 kids 50 would probably have lunch, that is £500 a week say. If they made 25% GP, then thats £125 to pay Staff for say 15 hours a week, plus Overheads and repairs.

No money in it at this scale, therefore no one can be arsed.

Surely food could be produced cheaper? Its so true what u say that no one can be arsed, basically they can't be arsed to provide fresh wholesome food for r kids instead of investing the money in a small kitchen set up they waste it on transporting crappy meals. X

[oldjerry]

No money in it at this scale, therefore no one can be arsed.

Agreed, but if education is brought down to just whats economically viable,you'd just teach VERY basic literacy,and how to plug in your computer (maybe that's what it's all about...I dunno...told you I was dreaming..)

[boboff]

The thing is Food was taken out of education a long time ago, it has to be outsourced, for fear of taking little ones budget for books, and spending it on a healthy diet, which might help education?

At our school the kitchen is outsourced, and they run a breakfast club, and also supply food to other smaller schools, the food is not good on some days, good on others, and my son at 9 thinks the dinner lady picks out the worst carrots for him!

I agree with you, but I think the following.

School dinners were minging, everyone ate them - up to 1980
Canteens had to make a profit, so they started making kids stuff they liked like chips and edible food like they get at home. Canteens were full, kids were happy.
They started making schools start serving healthy crap like veg and salad, 2000.
No one likes school meals, they don't make money, they close, rubbish gets shipped in from afar in a Taxi.

Now either Jamie Oliver owns shares in Taxi's or he was wrong.

Choice, is the answer, quality of healthy good food on a universal basis is never going to happen.

Interestingly though Army style kitchens rarely serve the healthiest of food, but it is basic and "wholesome" but kids don't always like watery chicken curry, chilli, mince served with rice and chips.

[chickenchargrill]

I'd be tempted to say money. The council decided my kids' school kitchen was out of date and would have to be closed, but would not give extra money to the school for them to do it. I think the school had enough in the coffers to fund it themselves. Their school caters for the kids on-site and 3 other schools.

So the other schools have to pay a wee bit more to get the food, but they don't have to maintain a kitchen or pay extra staff. They won yet another Healthy Eating award this year. Although, gotta say, it may be healthy, but they lack imagination.

Boboff - Jamie wasn't wrong nor does he own shares in taxis. I may send my kids in with sandwiches, but the menu is a vast improvement on 'dinners' when I was at school.

[MEL78]

Hi speaking as someone who has helped cook school meals for the last five years I can safely say that there is nothing wrong with them as cooks we have to deal with trying to feed nutritious meals to kids who would rather eat maccy ds each day... I have seriously had a ten year old ask my what that yellow stuff is (sweetcorn)!!!!!!!!........everything we feed the kids is cooked from scratch they get chips once every three weeks ........the meals may vary from county to county as different firms got the contracts but in our area they are fine.....

[Mrs H]

Hi speaking as someone who has helped cook school meals for the last five years I can safely say that there is nothing wrong with them as cooks we have to deal with trying to feed nutritious meals to kids who would rather eat maccy ds each day... I have seriously had a ten year old ask my what that yellow stuff is (sweetcorn)!!!!!!!!........everything we feed the kids is cooked from scratch they get chips once every three weeks ........the meals may vary from county to county as different firms got the contracts but in our area they are fine.....

Come and cook for Finny's school!!! Chips every 3wks, that sounds like bliss!!! Xxx

[JulieSherris]

And here in the country area of the Republic, there is NO school meals. They have pack-ups or they go without - simple.

Leah's school has started an organic garden - but there are only 10 kids through the school involved with it - strange.
Anyway, they had a trip to an organic garden centre a couple of weeks ago & one of the things that they made was a veggie soup - Leah was impressed that she got to wield a sharp knife to chop the carrot and leek... and now wants to make it for us here

[Graye]

I like this thread. I wasn't going to actually post on it until I read the bit about chips once every three weeks and it reminded me of the general excitement when WE were served chips - it was a major topic of playground conversation and probably happened about three times throughout my seven years there.

I went to school in the days where more or less everyone ate school dinners, no packed lunches were allowed and only those with a mother at home to make them a meal were allowed home at lunchtime. For some kids eating school lunch it was very likely the only meal they were going to get that day. Meals were one shilling a day (pre decimal) and almost invariable consisted of meat & two veg plus some sort of stodgy pudding with unpourable custard (has anyone ever seen custard needing to be served in slabs?) It was a little provincial grammar school and I can't remember there being any ethnic minority pupils so the only kids who had ANY element of choice were the Catholics who got a pilchard swimming in oily tomato sauce on a Friday. The meals were cooked and served up into aluminium pots by "dinner ladies" and doled out by table monitors, usually prefects. I honestly can't remember anyone not eating what was served up to them and all of us would watch the presiding prefects like hawks to make sure they divided up whatever was on offer absolutely fairly. I don't remember them being particularly pleasant meals and definitey not tasty but I suppose we didn't know any better and no one complained! Very occasionally we would have an apple from the school orchard instead of pudding, and sometimes cheese and potato pie rather than meat but normally it was something from a repertoire of about 10 dishes, more often than not sausages, minced meat pie, liver, cottage pie, steak & kidney pie, Irish stew etc. Never any condiments on the table and only water to drink. They certainly weren't exciting meals but I suppose at that time kids ate what was put in front of them without much complaint and they were probably nutritious, although I don't ever remember seeing salad and the veggies were boiled to a pulp more often than not!

I know this smacks a little of happy memories etc but I really can't understand why decent basic meals can't be served up now when they could in those days. I suppose trying to cater for ethnic minorities causes headaches, plus allergies etc. Having a combination of some kids going home, some bringing packed lunches and just a few wanting a school meal also affects the position - if all the pupils had school lunches it might make it more economically viable to prepare them on site too. On the other had all the meals I mentioned would probably store and transport to other sites very easily so I suppose it is all down to careful planning at the end of the day. I know for a fact that my granddaughter, a notoriously difficult eater who would live on chicken nuggets and chips given her own way, will eat her school dinners perfectly happily. I believe they are cooked at the much larger high school in town and distributed to the middle and first schools in a radius of about three miles. It seems to be economic sense as long as the food is decent to begin with.

[oldjerry]

Maybe what depresses me more than anything else(and God knows the list is long enough) is this essentially British attitude to food.To generalise,and carachterize a little perhaps,getthe stuff as cheap as possible,throw it down your neck as quick as possible,then get back to work/the telly (delete as appropriate) as soon as possible.I guess it's something to do with wartime rationing,or something,I'm sure it's not natural,how else could the british obsession with cookery programms be explained? a sort of subconcious desire to return to reality.
I know that other cultures,are steadily being infected by this disease,as global capitalim requires the continual expansion of consumption,but I hope I never live long enough to see the day that your average Brit on holiday abroad cant get over the meals that last for hours on end,and the locals that have heated arguements over which variety of tomato makes the best sauce.

[Green Aura]

I know that other cultures,are steadily being infected by this disease,as global capitalim requires the continual expansion of consumption,but I hope I never live long enough to see the day that your average Brit on holiday abroad cant get over the meals that last for hours on end,and the locals that have heated arguements over which variety of tomato makes the best sauce.

I agree wholeheartedly oj.

As for school dinners my experience of them was probably similar to Graye's. I was at infant school in the very early sixties and the meals were fairly dire. Most of us disliked them (apart from the few kids who were so hungry they wolfed everything down) but ate them anyway, veg were boiled to b*ggery and the meat was sparse and very tough. Beef cobbler stands out as the meal we all looked forward to for some reason the gravy was richer and the scone topping was lovely. Very occasionally we got sausage, baked beans and chips - still lovingly referred to as "school dinners" on the odd occasion we have that now.

By the time my daughter went to primary school thinks had hit their lowest ebb. For the first term I asked her every day what she had for lunch and the reply each time was "turkey drummers and chips". From the second term on she came home for lunch, then took packed lunch to seniors.

I think Jamie Oliver's attempts to improve school meals must be for the better, it won't improve the diets of everyone, or even the majority but if some kids get better nutrition it has to be to the good, doesn't it.

I don't know how it would work in inner city areas, especially as most or them have sold any spare inch of land to property developers, but it makes perfect sense to me that each school should have an area dedicated to growing veg, maybe have some chickens, and look after this as part of the curriculum. If paying for cooks and dinner ladies is out of the question, why not let the local catering colleges do school dinners as part of their work experience - the kids will be the most difficult customers they're ever likely to come across

[boboff]

And here in the country area of the Republic, there is NO school meals. They have pack-ups or they go without - simple.

Starting a sentence with "And" and surely there "are" no school meals, come on Julie!

I absolutely agree that the best option would be an all or nothing approach, you either get 100% eating school meals, or do away with it all together.

I was joking about Jamie Oliver, I agree with the principal, I was more pointing out that to get that quality in all schools would be impossible.

I can just imagine though the outrage in the Daily Mail, and Bill Turnbull mauling some school minister if either of these options were ever considered, there would be some petition and then "Dave" would say, " Oh no we're not changing anything we were just consulting"

That is the very depressing thing Jerry, nowadays things can't be decisive, they have to be a mix and match compromised fudge to try and keep everyone happy, whilst in the end making no one happy.

[JulieSherris]

Another grammatically incorrect comment.....

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