Universal Free School meals

I cannot understand how anyone can be against this to be honest.

Their are a lot of parents with addictions in this country and COVID made it much much worse.

Drinking at home, taking drugs at home etc and it has become more normalized.

Their are a lot of people who will feed their addiction before they feed their child.

My sister used to feed her son's friend with leftovers from dinner because he was starving in the evenings, although the mother of the starving child went ballistic when she found out what was going on.

We cannot sort all the issues of bad parents but denying kids a hot meal because they have bad parents is a twisted take.

Kids are the most vulnerable in our society and you would have to be heartless to deny them food to stick it to their parents.

I am guessing a lot of the people complaining don't have kids themselves.

I am not only knocking people with addictions, their are working families who are not home till 6 or half 6 and the child might not have dinner till after 7.

Giving them a hot meal will feed them longer than a bloody sandwich and set them up for the day.

Again because the Dept of Education refuse to actually interfere in the running of schools, some schools will do things the Dept funds well and some will do it appallingly badly, but that's not a reason to not fund these schemes. It's a reason to have a very hard think about the so-called "patronage" model of education in this country.

it’s really not difficult to make a tasty tomato based pasta sauce or a chicken curry without using heaps of unnecessary additives. Even at scale.

Catering food by it's nature is never going to be as good as properly cooked home meals.

I would love to see stats on all these high value good properly (insert adjective) cooked home meals I keep hearing about.

What do you mean?

How many people pontificating about the quality of the food are at home every evening whipping up a Mother Hubbard style meal free of processing or additives.

And prior to free schools I'm sure children were going to school with sandwiches made from organic minmiley processed wholemeal bread with organic free range ham and cheese sourced from a local farm.

The blaming the government for everything is turning very strange.

Its a sure signed of how wealthy we have become though complaining about free nutritious food.

Or mothers???? can decline the free school meals and feed them with non processed foods they have sourced themselves.

I think it's probably at ETB level that it will need to be addressed. It tends to be that a company tenders for the job at ETB level rather than individual schools.

The hot meals scheme is also in operation in DEIS post primary schools, it is funded differently but for schools without canteen facilities it is much the same as the primary system.

The parents order the meals - they have been told to cancel if it isn't wanted but they won't - they order on an app from the company. My understanding is that the school used to provide rolls and snacks which the students wanted, but the inspectorate criticised and said hot meals should be provided.

It's 15mins top for a stew the evening before from scratch. Cook for as long as you like depending how cheap/tough the meat.

Curries are a little longer in terms of prep as I'm a bit more fussy about when to add ingredients but again it's trivial in terms of complexity.

This is all a solved riddle thanks to an almost endless line of mothers through the millennia doing the best they could to feed families with very little means. Endless cooking programs/celebrities have over complicated what is a really simple and good value process. Everyone thinks they have to be Jamie Oliver when all they need to be is like their granny

Loads of people use slow cookers to cook food during the day, I'm old school with a casserole dish I got as a wedding gift fado fado.

I can't see the post you originally posted, but how can anyone know how many are thrown out.

If the child doesn't want it for lunch they bring it home in a container.

I highly doubt 130 of 150 are going in the bin in school and I don't see how anybody could have that information.

We NEED to sort our the parenting issues.

Kids who aren't getting fed are also not getting sleep, clothing, motivation or appropriate affection.

Feeding all kids so that the desperate cases get fed without being shamed is BS: everyone already knows who the desperate cases are.

Big curry or stew on a Saturday - freeze half. Big roast on a Sunday. Leftover roast on Monday. Take curry/stew out of freezer for Tuesday, quick pasta sauce on Wednesday. Pizza ( buy the dough) Thursday, fresh fish on Friday.

None of the weekday options take more than half an hour.

Yep 15 mins prep, if you want to spend hrs fçuking around belt away.

Good fatty meat and time at a low temperature gives the taste not all those other stews the modern celebrity cooks like to pedal

Well I like to think I do a fairly good job of it but I know I'm not perfect. I don't buy packet ham as it's junk, avoid processed foods as much as possible, although I use bovril for beef stock, usually make my own chicken stock for soups, add frozen kale to pasta/mash potatoes. Avoid fat free yogurts, yogurts though can be highly processed, stabilisers etc to extend shelf life so one must be careful with them. I make my own (pretty damn good) tomato sauce, onions and carrots in it so it's pretty healthy, again though bovril added and also Thai fish sauce in lieu of anchovies so not totally processed ingredient free. Omlettes are also pretty popular here and I add chopped baby spinach to it. Eggs are bough from one of those places with an honesty box, I can see the hens. So yea, while not perfect I think I do alright.

Saturdays are tricky to be fair but I usually do the prep at lunchtime and leave it cooking on a low heat. If we are out at something on Sundays we might get steak or something else quick instead. Not perfect but definitely don’t need to be eating upf or prepared food every day.

Ovens doesn't need to be watched either, but there is no way I am leaving anything with a heating element on if I am not present to keep an eye on it, even occasionally.

Only about half of secondary schools are under the oversight of the local ETB and only 1-2% of primary schools

Yes, I'm well aware of that. I'm responding to the poster who said the individual school I'm talking about needs to sort it out urgently.

Why don't the parents just order the rolls the kids want?

Or is it not an option on that menu?

There is 4 type of rolls on ours.

Warm Rolls so technically a hot meal, but still rolls.

Maybe the meals you don't see are the rolls, which have been eaten. 😁

Anyway it is hardly an unsolvable problem.

But this is in a secondary school, right? That wouldn’t fall under this new scheme for primary school kids. That sounds like the school needs to talk to, or change, whomever supplies their lunches.

FWIW, in my kids’ school, I’ve been told that the older kids, 5th and 6th class, love the meals and look for any “spares” going if kids are out.

Would think of complaining to the school, the supplier or the Department of Education? They have guidelines that the supplier has to abide by to ensure the quality of the food. Something the supplier in my kids’ school seem to be very good at.

Also, as this is a hot lunch scheme, would your child not have been included in your own dinners at home anyway?

That feedback has been given.

Yes we would have a hot dinner every evening & he would nearly always eat that.

Thinking also of waste reduction, no point in ordering if its not being eaten.

The waste that is generated from these meals not being consumed in some schools is criminal