I was pleased to be one of those calling for free school meals for all state school children in The Observer today:
Why for all state school children? Simply because it is likely that 50% or more will face the risk of hunger and there is no time to sort out a system to differentiate those in most need from everyone else when the crisis is now upon us.
This is urgent and really cannot wait. It is a small issue, and yet with massive potential gains.
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And if all children have school meals, it will go a long way to removing the stigma of being on free meals.
Good point, Mr Rimmer. I’m not sure that Hayek would be the right vehicle to land this message though! Now if someone were able to furnish Marcus Rashford, Jack Monroe, and Jamie Oliver – the ‘Holy Trinity of School Dinners’ – together with a crib sheet of punchy, well reasoned numbers ….
Jamie Oliver was despised by many parents when he tried to impose “healthy” school meals. Many parents unfortunately do not want their kids to eat healthy food. Very sad
Whilst Jamie’s intentions were good the fact is the kids don’t eat it, vast amounts go in the bins every day. No one wants a return of turkey twizlers but it’s surely better to be full rather than a healthy meal in the bin.
Are you telling me kids now won’t eat healthily?
Not that children won’t eat healthy it’s the menus the kitchens have to work to. There’s little flexibility for variation based on region r what the cook knows their children will eat, on the hottest day of the year it was roast dinner day, unsurprisingly most went in the bin. The children are served a biscuit, reduced sugar, they all go every day, as does the pizza.
My point is that giving children free food is only good if it’s eaten, give the cooks a bit more leeway, most of them know their children and what they like.
Accepted
In the 1960s, at a time when Britain was much poorer than it is today, my school moved from a collection of clapped out buildings and huts to a purpose built brand new school.
Amongst the wonders was a fully staffed and equipped kitchen with a large sunlit refectory, airy in the summer, warm in winter. The food was excellent fresh produce cooked on the day and by any standards the menus were well designed and healthy.
A detail that for some reason has always stuck in my memory is that we were proudly told that amongst the kitchen staff there was a full-time nutritionist. It was the first time I had ever come across the concept.
In what is alleged to be a much richer country today, apart from decades of political choices driven by greed, ignorance and class animosity there is no reason why such meals could not be provided free of charge.
David Byrne says
The cost of living crisis will result in massive dietary changes within impoverished households.
Children will need to be protected from unhealthy, cheap food and this could be achieved through the provision of free school meals.
Call this state control, the nanny state, socialism or whatever, but it is better that kids have a chance of eating some good food during the day and, maybe, avoid those serious medical problems in later life,
I went to the local shop near my work place the other day. It’s in what is obviously a poorer part of the city I work in.
And there in the shop was an urchin – a little boy called ‘Fin’ I think, no taller than my knee (I’m 6ft tall). He was in with his Mum and he was walking – he seemed too small to be able to walk but he was.
I watched him walk with Mum back to the small block of flats they were living in.
I couldn’t get over how small and vulnerable he looked and how he did that thing that little ones do – follow his Mum in total trust gripping his sweets as if his life depended on it, but stopping and looking at everything on his little trip out to the shop.
I actually felt quite bad for him and the world we had created for him. Would he go cold and hungry this year? Would his Mum – his family – be able to provide for him?
I’ve got no idea of course.
But it makes you wonder if moron politicians like Liz truss and Sunak (and many others) actually walk about this country and see the people in it they ‘rule’ over and realise what their ‘policies’ might do to people like Fin and his mother?
Do they see?
What do they see?
God – it makes you wonder, it really does.
Re comment,by Pilgrim slight return, Aug 29th 8.47 am.
‘URCHIN’? Are you from the 18th century? I can’t believe that was used to describe a CHILD in 2022, wow.
The Tories do not care if little children go hungry, they’d have them working in factories or fields if they could get away with it!
As Alex Beveridge comments, in Scotland all CHILDREN in primary school (called junior school in England) have free school meals and all whose parents are in need of state support ie universal credit, in high school. Nicola Sturgeon has urged the English government to do the same.
Free school meals for all children in state schools – yes. But please – decent, nutritive, dietarily well balanced meals – not rubbish packed with calories and sugars and salt and transfats. I taught in the seventies and eighties at a secondary school where the dinners were prpared in the school kitchens by enthusiastic dinner ladies who produced excellent simple meals that were eaten with relish by the students. Meat, fish, plenty of vegetables, fruit, vegetarian options, all available and providing a proper balanced diet. Then came the Thatcher revolution. For reasons of economy, the local authority was told costs had to be cut, so meal preparation was outsourced to private companies who operated from central kitchens in the local authority area some distance from the schols. The precooked meals were delivered in vans to the school, and reheated by the dinner ladies – those that had not been made redundant – who lost their enthusiasm for creating imaginative and nutritious meals. What came to the school from the central kitchens was stodge, packed with low quality tooth-rotting vitamin free carbohydrate, sparse token vegetables, fruit free, dull-dull-dull, and a recipe for teenage obesity. So, yes, free school meals, but DECENT NUTRITIOUS free school meals.
I couldn’t agree more. We already provide free school meals in Scotland. Why can’t this be done elsewhere in the UK?
As you say on many issues, this is a political choice.
I believe in Scotland free meals are provided for all Primary school pupils from P1 to P5. And Secondary school pupils can access free meals, if the family receives certain benefits.