I read today that the education minister Ed Balls wants to “reform” school lunches. He wants to get rid of “prison style trays” and use china plates instead to encourage more people to eat school lunches. Now, if you’ll excuse me saying, Ed Balls talks a load of old balls. It’s not the fact you have to eat off a tray that bothers people, it’s the fact that most of the food served up in schools tastes bloody disgusting and you’d be sued for trying it serve it up anywhere else.
I remember my school dinners in Primary School. We had colourful plastic trays, which were wonderful. The best part of the meal. The food they served was terrible; lumpy, dry mashed potato served with some kind of greasy meat product, probably from some kind of mutant animal, with either soggy vegetables or rock hard ones. And you were expected to eat it all. Trying to shovel that sort of food down your throat was traumatising. That was classed as the “good” food as well. If you got there late, they’d run out of that sort of food and all that was on offer were sandwiches…either tinned meat flavour or peanut butter.
I remember very clearly, getting to the dinner hall late and all there was left were peanut butter sandwiches. I informed the lunch lady I was allergic to them because I am. I was only about 7, I couldn’t remember what exactly happened to me when I ate peanut butter as the last time I had was when the FP made me a sandwich with it and I swelled up and had to go to hosptial, aged about 2. But I knew I wasn’t supposed to eat it. The conversation went like this:
Dinner lady: “We’ve only got peanut butter sandwiches left.”
Me: “Oh…well I can’t eat them, I’m allergic to them”
Dinner lady: “What happens when you eat them?”
Me: “I don’t know. But I am allergic.”
Dinner lady: “No you’re not, you mean you just don’t like them.”
She then proceeded to put some on my tray. I can’t remember the outcome, I don’t think I ate them.
School puddings were OK. If you were lucky. They had chocolate custard often with chocolate cake, which was awesome. I remember a variety of green custard though, that wasn’t so great as it looked like snot all over your pudding. Some days, it was obvious they couldn’t be bothered and the pudding on offer was an apple.
Secondary school was generally just chips and unhealthy food. On plates. Like a cafe. The chips were fine. Everything else wasn’t.
So, in short….Ed Balls…the problem isn’t with the dinner trays. It’s with the food. And the service. And the price. Everything apart from the dinner trays in fact.
-r
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