Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher

[d000hg]

I have no objection to the provision of good nutricious school meals.
I also understand that some parents do not look after their kids and thus school meals
are very important for some kids. Both my parents came from large single parent families when their
were no benefits, despite their poverty there was always food on the the table.

It's not so much poverty as terrible parents. Back in the good/bad old days you pretty much had to cook as ready meals and takeaways weren't so prevalent. Benefits families can be very lazy and it's that more than starvation which I'm talking about... benefits do a good job of providing money that people actually can afford food, in general anyway. But giving your kid a pop-tart and a can of Coke is not a meal.

For the parents, I'm of the opinion "screw them" but I do pity their poor children who are only going to end up the same being brought up lazy and malnourished (and there are strong links between diet and learning).

[OwlHoot]

There is a school of thought that suggests all School dinners should be free.

Sounds like a pretty outmoded school of thought, for the simple reason that most kids are unbelievably finicky about food these days. Many will only eat synthetic crunchy things, fizzy drinks, and other such chemical muck.

So most free food would just be wasted, whereas thirty or forty years ago, when cooking was more conservative and there wasn't so much artificial junk food, most kids would wolf down anything put in front of them.

[d000hg]

Sounds like a pretty outmoded school of thought, for the simple reason that most kids are unbelievably finicky about food these days. Many will only eat synthetic crunchy things, fizzy drinks, and other such chemical muck.

So most free food would just be wasted, whereas thirty or forty years ago, when cooking was more conservative and there wasn't so much artificial junk food, most kids would wolf down anything put in front of them.

You're right. It's not the schools' place to educate children about food. Ban all food on the premises other than school food, they'll soon get hungry enough to stop wimpering about 'intolerances'

[OwlHoot]

You're right. It's not the schools' place to educate children about food. Ban all food on the premises other than school food, they'll soon get hungry enough to stop wimpering about 'intolerances'

Very sound idea - And they'd have to eat the wobbly and gristly bits too.