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Does your child have school dinners? Do you know what they actually eat? Did you know that the school dinner service aims to make a profit?
We work in a school where the kitchens produce between 150 and 200 meals a day. The catering arrangements work on the basis of a cafeteria system where the children choose from a selection of meals.
Obviously being children, they choose chips on Monday, chips on Tuesday, chips on Wednesday, roast on Thursday (no chips available) and chips on a Friday! “What accom-panies these chips?” I hear you cry. Well, delicious, deep-fried and battered pieces of reformed meat.
If your child is feeling particularly hungry they may choose to add another fried item to their plate, such as an onion ring. ‘Vegetables’ consist of baked beans, spaghetti hoops or cannon ball peas. On the odd occasion there may be some well-margarined spaghetti to accompany the deep fried items - yummy!
Alternatively your child may choose chips or mashed potato to go with the pasta. It is not uncommon to even see the option of ‘spaghetti and a bread roll.’ How they eat such a spaghetti sandwich is, as yet, unknown.
Other tasty options we have witnessed include: ‘turkey twizzler’ (reformed and skewered turkey sawdust, possibly consisting of feet and wattle), insipid sausages (these may contain some pork – the parts that even sausage manufacturers refuse to use) and pasta twirls boiled for an hour or two until al-dente was but a distant memory.
Baked beans and bolognaise sauce is an unusual menu item, but chicken curry and a fish finger beats all the other weird and wonderful combinations hands down. Mrs Cropley from Dibley eat your heart out! There are salads, but these are actively hidden, so are rarely chosen.
Let’s not forget dessert. Here you may choose from a number of cakes, biscuits and cream filled items. The limited choice of fruit (green or brown bananas, unripe apples or wizened satsumas) is hidden on a trolley behind the serving dinner lady - hardly an acceptable place.
To wash down this fat and sugar laden feast we find an e-number crammed, chemical-flavoured, ‘spring water’ concoction is available, plus other carbonated mixtures of chemicals and dubious flavourings.
So what does your child pay for this haute cuisine? Well, between £1.70 and £2.00 a day. That is £10 per week, or over £500 a year. A family of four can go on holiday at Butlins for this sum.
The produce is delivered to the school, not directly from the local farmers’ markets, butchers, fishmongers and green grocers, but from a frozen food lorry. Surely Norfolk County Council could harness the benefits of a rural economy and source their ingredients directly from local producers?
Imagine the benefits of locally produced food, fresh vegetables and meats versus frozen carbohydrates with little or no nutritional value. Other counties have embraced high profile TV chefs to help improve the menus on offer and to encourage children to eat a more varied diet. They do use and encourage locally produced food. Does this happen in your county?
Dinner ladies surely have a moral responsibility to ensure that children choose a balanced meal. Children are taught what constitutes a healthy diet but given a free rein will doubtless resort to the familiar fried options. Encouragement to choose sensibly is essential.
Whenever we have tried to discuss our feelings as a staff with the school caterers, we are met with resistance. They have a limited amount of money to spend and want to maximise the profit they make.
Nothing will change unless Norfolk County Council sees fit to offer all school children in their care a balanced and nutritious meal. Should school dinner services be a profit making organisation? Do we want profit to be made from our children’s health? Surely it is time to make your feelings as a parent known. FC
Victoria Gateshill and Theresa Ives are teachers at a Primary School in Norfolk.
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