UK head teachers urged to ban packed lunches and make school meals mandatory
88 replies, posted
While I worked at a school over the previous two years, I made good friends with the cooks there, and I must say for a primary school the food was top notch quality with 0% processed food and all fresh cooked on the day and a huge variety for a 3 week period, and all the children seemed pretty happy with the food so in situations like that this sort of thing would benefit the children. Especially with all the free school dinners benefits for those that are in a position that they cannot afford extra.
Example of the dinners: [URL]http://pdfcast.org/images/s/4622/schoolmenu.jpg[/URL]
"What's the most important thing we must do about these children and their lifestyle?"
"fuck them, lets make money
y'know, in general, schools don't know what's up. i'd argue that education for <18-19 year olds is the single most important thing in modern society, considering that it's raising and educating an entire generation of people, so the fact that districts have to conform to this stupid "TEST SCORES = FUNDING" bullshit is bullshit, because it results in a ton of fucking kids who only know how to take a test. if you're in a district that doesn't get much funding because of its lower test scores, lol tough shit bro, you gotta deal with less learning resources, little to no sports teams, and less technology and shit. if you're in a district that gets plenty of funding, chances are the school will still be forced to train students to take tests and get the high numbers so the government will give them big money, despite having a ton of privileges and shit.
i basically hate school.
sorry for spamming up the thread with my opinions, i am just really kinda upset about how school works in the Us (and the uk but mostly the us)
[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;41426687]schools usually don't provide free meals, they're usually quite expensive[/QUOTE]
Hell at my school (approx 10 years ago) It was 25p for a fucking slice of toast with margerine on , total rip off(though i have to admit it was fucking delicious)
I find it pretty weird that so many people had terrible school lunches, at our school the vast majority of people got school lunch because it was delish (and unhealthy and expensive but nobody cares about that esp when you're 12-17)
[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;41426687]schools usually don't provide free meals, they're usually quite expensive[/QUOTE]
The government has actually started providing free breakfast for primary schools (so a slice of toast)
I know this is really targeting primary schoolers but surely this will just push more people to greggs?
This is laughable if it's anything like the American cafeterias where it would be healthier AND cheaper for the kids if they just served them McDonalds instead.
Man you guys went to terrible schools, the schools I went to never served tasteless food, most of things I've eaten since my elementary days were never as crappy as you make it sound.
Perhaps the school food in England are okay, but at my high school, I feel physically ill the rest of the day whenever I have to buy lunch. I'm certain that my packed lunch of a sandwich, fruit, water, and something like a granola bar or pretzels, is a million times healthier than getting french fries, pizza, and chocolate milk, which is what most people get from the school cafeteria. I think it really just depends on the person though. If someone brings a shitty lunch to school every day, then if you force them to buy lunch, they'll just buy the shittiest lunch they can. Forcing them to buy lunch won't do anything but make them mad.
most of the school meals in my school are "lumpy custard with rice pudding gone wrong" so I can see this being a hit
oh on friday's we get "mushed fish with rock hard chips" which is great fun.
the delis are even better
we get a new "snack" every day, my favourite being "pita bread with cheese on top pizza"
the burgers are ok though but they look disgusting.
A lot of people I know pack healthier lunches than the school offers. This is just stupid.
I think the main reason I always brought packed lunch to lunch at my school was due to the fact that the school was overpricing the fuck out of every food item.
The only time and the only thing I bought from the lunch room was some pizza that they priced at 5 or 3 dollars.:suicide:
The pizza tasted good at least. :wink:
Speaking of pizza prices around here I could get a whole large pizza for 5 dollars plus a drink costing me 6.50 :v:
But yeah screw forcing me to eat your expensive "healthy" food.
[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;41425906]how anyone can consider most school canteen food healthy is beyond me[/QUOTE]
We had the worst canteen food ever back at my high school.
I mean, seriously. Sweet zombie JESUS!...
The bowls of "soup" (mostly water with a bit of flavour) had a mild taste of bleach, every now and then the fish seemed rotten (not to mention not even hobos would eat that kind of fish), and when they dazzled us with hamburgers, which makes us think of jbig and juicy round circles of meat, we got thin discs of processed meat that would fit on the palm of your hand.
The only good days where when it was roasted chicken with rice. The chicken was always good somehow.
[editline]12th July 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=RankaLee;41428392]I think the main reason I always brought packed lunch to lunch at my school was due to the fact that the school was overpricing the fuck out of every food item.
The only time and the only thing I bought from the lunch room was some pizza that they priced at 5 or 3 dollars.:suicide:
The pizza tasted good at least. :wink:
Speaking of pizza prices around here I could get a whole large pizza for 5 dollars plus a drink costing me 6.50 :v:
But yeah screw forcing me to eat your expensive "healthy" food.[/QUOTE]
Good thing we can still have packed lunches or just get out of school to buy something else at the bakery next door. They just don't let us in with the food because of some policy about people thinking its food from the school and its food that makes you fat and if it causes you problems they think its the school's fault and bla bla bla...
This is just stupid, the packed lunch as far as I'm concerned is a miracle. You can trade your lunch with your friends, you can eat your lunch in between lessons, you could pack your lunchbox with tons of sweets and anything else you like to eat.
This would probably work quite well in a small school but imagine in one with 200+ pupils, I'm certainly not one to trade in a packed lunch for one where I am at the mercy of whatever I'm served let alone one where I'm forced to wait in a queue like I could have done last night at the supermarket.
The only thing good about school lunches was them turkey or chicken drumsticks
[QUOTE=massaki;41425931]Most school canteen food is recycled stuff.
Why oh why would you ban packed lunches.[/QUOTE]
It's all about the dosh
Oh god, in the US the food is atrocious, I was too lazy to pack a lunch and I would get moderately sick every day from the low-quality pizza they sell.
Man, I never had the bad luck with school lunches that apparently everyone else did. The cooking class in my high school always prepared fresh salads and cold cut sandwhiches, and my school fazed out full-sugar drinks for diet soda (Though aspartame is shitty, but whatever). And the daily specials were always good too, except for my grade eleven year when the main chef had a kid and her back-up didn't know anything other than hotdogs and packaged rice.
"Yes, kids must buy from us so we can profit...I mean, provide healthy food!"
If they're anything like the cafeterias they have in the US, under no circumstances should this be allowed to happen. School lunches are abominations, entirely inedible and overpriced. At my highschool they once served lasagna with pickles in it to meet the vegetable requirement. Crinkle-cut dill pickles. The portions were almost always too small to sustain anyone with an active lifestyle. Not that anyone could finish their tray ever though.
Up here school food is free and adequate. In my opinion it's a very important thing to spend tax money on.
[QUOTE=Silikone;41429475]"Yes, kids must buy from us so we can profit...I mean, provide healthy food!"[/QUOTE]
It wouldn't be all that surprising if the schools were working in cohorts with an industrial food company and were promised some sort of discount or incentive.
I guess on the one hand, they're trying to force change in health, but they don't really have the power to force children to eat their food, since there might be children allergic to specific things or has specific dietary requirements because of some conditions or something.
They should probably focus more on poorer areas to alleviate costs of the parents, but attempt to raise awareness of health, seriously, isn't it better for health to be known whilst having...a healthy control on freedom of choice?
Unsure how bad it is now, but 5/10 years ago when i was in secondary school, the school dinners were sorta nice, usually went for either mixing curry/rice or beans/macaroni&cheese with the pudding usually being something Chocolate-Based whilst maintaining a normal body weight at around 8-10 stone as i got through the early-mid teens, as soon as i dropped out of college near my late teens it just progressed to something about 13 stone and a quarter...and im one of the kids who never even got to be out on their own during play/lunchtimes just because the TAs didn't want to stretch their workforce out.
Difference between Secondary School and College was that the Lunch was provided for free, whereas College was so close to town that you could literally walk out (and i was legally an adult. so it's not like the TAs could stop me anyway), probably the most healthy if pleasured by new senses ever back then, even if im socially an introvert, everyone seemed so casual at college though.
Look at schools now, chances are they removed the vending machines, pizza has probably been replaced with that Seaweed Salt Pizza with Brown flour and grass-grown Pepperoni slices or something. :x
EDIT: Forgot to mention that the EMA scheme was up when i was in college, so that helped pay for college supplies and food. (maybe even a game once in a while... >,>)
[QUOTE=Silikone;41429475]"Yes, kids must buy from us so we can profit...I mean, provide healthy food!"[/QUOTE]
your avatar made this so much funnier
I knew someone who tried cafeteria food once.
[img]http://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/files/2007/10/the-blob-eats-a-jock.jpg[/img]
Have not heard from him since.
my school sold gingerbread men for like 50p and they were fucking gorgeous. on my last day i bought like 10 of them
I won't even touch the food at my school
I think it might be radioactive
I don't even eat lunch anymore. Shit's too expensive and tastes like trash. I just wait till I get home and eat.
The lunch at our school where absolute shit. Two cases where school food have turned south for me.
1. When i was in the 4th grade. I got food poising from there shitty soy like burgers. Missed school for 3 days.
2. Freshman year of high school, I got a chicken patty, Took a bit and notced it was squishy and cold, looked at it and it was raw. Went to the lunch ladies and showed them the patty. They told me they cant refund me and i threw it at them. Got 2 days of OSS. Apparently the next day when i was at home, They only served the bag lunches while the System checked it out.
I took my own lunch from home from there on out. And I would Really Raise hell if they tell em i cannot have my own fucking food. (im in the US anyways, and have heard multiple cases where they tried to do this.)
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