Ep 193: School Dinner Menu Overhaul: What's Changing & Why?

0:00 Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Teach Sleep Repeat. My name is Dylan. And my name is Tatum. And today we're going to be taking a look and chat about those pesky school dinners. What's your history with school dinners? What's your the? History here, pal, is I eat all of the school dinners that I see, except for most of them, because they're disgusting. So we're gonna we're gonna talk about the overhaul of Food Standards. We keep it in. Yeah, yeah. That's that's stayed in. What's changing? Why it matters? The bigger conversations around food and standards and school dinners in the UK. Sounds like you have a vendetta against them. We'll get into that. I can't. I can't wait for that. But yeah, the reason we're talking about this is because this week in the news, you may have seen it's the first major overhaul in a long time.

0:43 So the government announced this in terms of school Food Standards in April this year. It's it's been a decade since it's happened. It's been a long time. And you made it. I've thought to myself when I read this, haven't we done that? Yeah. Didn't, Didn't we do this thing where we made saw dinners, OK, for everyone and there was a certain level where they had to meet a certain criteria? We did, but apparently it didn't go too far. No, and that was 10 years ago and apparently 10 years feels like 3 minutes in our lives now. That's true. That's true. It was quite a while ago. The entirety of our career though, if you really think about it like there's been no, there's been no point in our actual teaching career when this changed. So it's always been the same for us from that point of view. But I can definitely think back to my experiences in school. Yeah. Where I, you know, I'd buy a 50P iced bun and a 1 LB bottle of full sugar Coke for my lunch every single day.

1:27 Yeah. Yeah. So I do think it's moving in the right direction. I do think you have to have some standards, right? It's better, yeah. Definitely, definitely my My sole experience of that was the 1 LB bacon rolls. Every single every single morning. A nice big greasy bacon roll. Come to school every single day, month, and a pound. What for? You know, stuff. Bacon roll every day which is nothing to do with even the schools. You can't even control this. I would get I would have my lunch, dinner, money for that day. I'd go into school, spend like 1 LB maybe out of 3 LB I used to get and on the way home get a large portion of chips from the chippy on just a walk home and we'd share it with my mates, me and two other. Friends walking, we went to the same school, obviously different year groups. So I know exactly what chippy you're talking about because I did the same thing, said slightly worse.

2:10 Battered Miles bars Sid Mars Bar on the way home. That was a good. Phase. So it was saying here it doesn't matter what the government do if kids are, you know, Yeah. And buying a daily battered Mars bar, there's a problem. Yeah, definitely. A problem, but yeah, I don't think it's wrong. I think it's a good thing that the government are still looking at this. Can we control every variable? Let's get from the offset. Obviously we can't. Obviously you can't control every single variable of what a child eats, but there are some things you can do. So I think it is a good thing that the government are opening this up to consultation and proposing changes to schools and how school dinner at least operates the food that we can sort sort of control of course, in children's lives on a kind of, you know, UK perspective. Well, look, how many times have we sat here and said, I think rightfully that for a lot of children, it's the only hot meal they get a day.

2:53 Yeah. Right. So. So that that that isn't suddenly not true now. Sure. So if we can control that and make sure it's a good hearty meal, yeah. I think we're gonna get into a real discussion here around healthiness and also quality of food as well. I think that's really important to do, but it is just a fact at the end of the day. We've got it right here. One in three pupils leave primary school either overweight or obese. Tooth decay from sugar is the leading cause of hospital admissions for 5 to 9 year olds, and only 8% of primary and 5% of secondary school pupils meet sugar guidelines. Crazy there's an issue here. Really, that's that I like, even though I kind of know this like in my gut, literally the sugar in my gut, but I also know this is a spring.

3:34 Didn't didn't you start last episode by saying you had a crunch Easter egg for for breakfast? We're here you go. Yeah, it's really important. Right, OK. It's really, really important, actually. It's disgusting. Let's set the tone because I think I'll I'll talk about these from my high horse away for this episode. I am thinking of the perspective of I don't want children to end up like me, right? I don't want. Neither do I as. Addicted to sugar as I am through poor life. Choices. It's it's a good it's a good get out of gaol free cards addicted as well when really just have no willpower. So. Fair enough. Whatever you want to, whatever you want to call it, Dylan makes you feel better. Yeah, yeah. Your withdrawal symptoms to You didn't have that crunchy Easter egg this morning. Yeah, I just, I just don't think, I don't think children should be living the same lifestyle that I do with my. Absolutely not, absolutely not.

4:16 And I think also I choked aside for a second. I think that it's so weak when people say, well, you're not that thing. How can you say other people should be what what you want about? I can, I can. I can understand my own shortcomings and not want other people to go through. That that, that's like, it's like sums up parenting for me in a nutshell. I won't go off in too much tangent, but it's exactly that all the time. Why? Why are you being a hypocrite? I'm being a hypocrite because at least I can control my what? My 2. I don't want my 2 year old to end up as unhealthy as me. Do you know? Seriously like I don't want that to happen. So yes, I'm being a hypocrite for a good reason. I know we. Don't want to go off too tangent too much, but just on that note, I had a conversation with my mum literally last night because obviously Rory goes to nanny a lot of the time and and stays with nanny.

4:59 And we were talking about how my mum was just talking about screen time, right? And she and we were talking about food in general and chocolate because she likes to give him treats and stuff. And that's absolutely. That is absolutely fine. I'm not against anything in moderation, right? Yeah, but I just, we had a really like candid conversation about how end of the day, when they are two years old, the adults in that child's life have control over these things. It's not like now my my mum can't stop me raiding my fridge for a chocolate bar at 9:00 AM, right? Or looking at your phone. Exactly that or watching, you know, a series for 9 hours in a row. Yeah, right. But actually we all can control that when it comes to our my 2 year old son. So whilst we can do that, when we give into that and when we, and I'm not saying I'm perfect because I give into it as well sometimes.

5:39 But when we give in to him and say, Oh yeah, you can have an ice cream or, Oh yeah, you can just watch Teddy for a bit longer, that's us giving in. Yeah, that's not, that's us doing that. So we can control that as adults in the room and just say, I understand that I want 7 ice creams in a row and I can actually do that if I wanted to because I'm an adult. He's 2. Like I, I go into the fridge and get it for him. Yeah, yeah. I turn the television on and put what he wants on the screen. So I think this just comes down to as adults, we have control over that of our own children. And whether we like it or not, all the government are just overreaching and telling me what I can and can't do. Yeah, Yeah, they are when it comes to children, actually, no, because it's based in evidence. It's based on those stats we just heard. And we either are happy with those stats, we just let people do what they want and crack on, or we as society say, let's do something about.

6:24 I like that as an underpinning thing throughout this it if your only thought is well you do that as that, stop it. It is literally I don't care. I can be the biggest hypocrite in the world and so can you. It doesn't matter. We are talking about other people, children who we have complete control over and whilst we have that complete control we should maybe set them up for a better life, even if it's better than ours. If anything, it should be be better than ours. That's the whole point. Isn't that the point of humanity? We've said about this before, every generation after the after the previous one should be enhanced, right? What we working towards? If that's not the case and it does genuinely feel like, and this is just a meta point now, it genuinely feels like we're at the point actually where we stop making that. Progress does feel like that, doesn't it? It really does.

7:04 So, right, let's, let's let's go into a section now where we literally, just for the sake of knowing this, all of us listening and including ourselves, what is changing? Let's look at the old rules and the new rules. New rules side by side so we can see the differences that are being. Proposed here yeah, because my first thought here when I saw this news story was how on earth can we improve this even more genuinely because I thought to myself surely last time we just did the improvements that were. On the standard, that was my gut feeling as well. I was like, well, we must have just. Did we did we say, oh, they can only have, you know, full sugar Coke three times a week? Yeah, I mean it, it seems. Well, we'll see now. So let's actually go through it. Let's do one each. Hayden. I'll start with deep fried food. In my opinion, in my head, I that was just bad. Yeah, the fact that somebody exists, I'm like, okay, we met last, Yeah.

7:46 What we're doing differently now this time, So in 2014 essentially it was just limited. It was maximum of two portions a week deep fried in kitchen plus maximum of two portions a week pre manufactured or deep fried food. Yeah, like so there was a limit put on it. Yeah, exactly. So the change that it will be banned out right from now on, no deep fried food at all. Chips, wedges, hash Browns still allowed but they have to be oven cooked and maximum twice a week for that and only as part of a meal. Jamie Oliver will be. Fine. Tears of joy because that's all I can think of. Because that was my era of like when when the Food Standards changed back when I was at school was like Jamie Oliver basically being like, can we stop giving chips to kids for breakfast, lunch and dinner at all times every day in school when we could just not.

8:28 Yeah. Absolutely. But if just deep fried food in general, I think that is a good thing, right? Definitely. We don't need can. Oh, the kids won't get deep fried food? OK. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to do this analogy one more time as well. Sorry. So you can stop. No, Jamie. So we can like stop doing it and people can just think about themselves. If you're thinking. Well, I bet you have some deep fried food. Yes, I do. Yes, I do have deep fried food sometimes. And the kids will probably still have it sometimes at home, but we can control it at school, so we should. Is it good for them? No. So let's just not give it to them there. Genuinely I think that's a good thing. Ban deep fried food at schools. Cool, move on, go on. Hey the next one. Desserts and sweet stuff. So 2014 confectionery and chocolate coated products were banned, but cakes, biscuits, desserts and ice cream were allowed. As long as they were low in fat slash sugar, there was no limit on how often they could be served that. Genuinely.

9:18 Now, just to be fair, that seems reasonable. Yeah, to me that that, that that rule seems reasonable. So I'm interested to see what. They're doing. I think when we go through this, we'll find that a lot of the changes that were made in 2014 were reasonable given the initial context of they were of like of what was allowed, of what was allowed. OK, the comparison of what was allowed to 2014 was a good move in the right direction. What I'm saying here though is that rule seems fair enough, ongoing. Like, I wouldn't look at that role and think, oh, that's bad. Sure, let's have a look at what it is now you can see if you that change. So what's it changing to? It's changed to So now it will be cakes and desserts limited to once per week. Any dessert served must contain at least 50% fruit or veg and no confectionery or chocolate. Fair enough. Ice creams, waffles, high sugar products removed entirely at primary. Fruit must be the only dessert at least once a week. OK.

10:02 So to me, it seems like they they did, they did this, they pulled it in, they pulled around and they've just gone a bit further. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Snipped that in the butt a bit more. Yeah, because you've still got, you know, you've still got desserts. It's just once a week now. Yeah, mainly has to be fruit and veg high sugar. A lot of ice cream. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. All right. Give them some ice cream. Yeah. When you were with them for most of the time. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Do you know what? Now I've seen that again. Seems seems fair enough. Like I don't think we can ever moan that as a school we're saying don't give them a sugary biscuit. I don't think you can have it. You'd be mumble. Oh, but it's nice for them. It might be nice for them. And you know what, it might even be. It's obviously not even might. It's obviously fine. A kid has that every now and then. Yeah.

10:45 But yeah, like that, Yeah, it seems reasonable. To kids also like throwing pens when they run out at their at their. Friends Heads. In the middle of class because it's funny yeah I'm not gonna let them do it though. Genuine. There's so many things that are nice and I think as parents, as teachers, as as people that are in charge of children, sometimes you just do just have to make decisions. Yeah, that they're not gonna like, but you know, it's better than for them in the long. Run and they still get it sometimes in the week. Exactly. It's not even that bad in in my head. My experience with dinners, school dinners, by the way, was that the dessert was basically always fruit was an option. So it's saying here it needs to be only fruit once a week so they're forced to eat. Yeah, what's wrong with that? Yeah, nice. Got some fruit drinks. Let's do this one. 2014 fruit juice was permitted when that was introduced. Water and milk required to be able available. Cool.

11:27 Now fruit juice will be banned due to high sugar content. Primary schools only water, unsweetened milk or plant based milk and in secondary also sugar free flavoured drinks. Still fruit flavoured drinks with no added sugar. Tea and coffee available as well. Again, can we complain? Can we complain? Juice isn't? I know for a fact in in most of the day you're not allowed juice in your lessons. Yeah it's sticky if it's spilled. Like it's more of a practical reason. I personally don't mind if a kids got some juice through their dinner though. No, I thought this one seemed a bit harsh but I but I do think it addresses maybe a a wider misconception. I know that teaching in year 4 when we talk about teeth and stuff it's always shocked to find out that fruit juice was like even remotely not just pure healthy sure. I mean like when they found out orange juice was packed full of natural sugars.

12:12 Yeah. And and we, we, we're making a difference here between fruit juice and squash. Yeah, definitely I'm. Very much. I'm very much taking this fruit juice as in literal juice from like. Yeah, it'd be interesting to get more. Maybe we dive a bit more into that and then come back to the future because it I wasn't even mentioned cordial squash and I think it might be including that as well. It'd be. Interesting to see. Be very interesting. Because primary schools, it says only water, milk, that's it. So it must be if it's banning squash as well. I just think a bit of blackcurrant squash is all right. Yeah. Like especially if it's that really, really, really low sugar stuff you can get now. Yeah, because you're allowed in secondary school. So they're still fruit flavoured drinks, flavoured sugar free flavoured drinks. Yeah, yeah. Is it? Would it be OK for a price? I think it'd be OK, but I reckon there's probably a good reason behind it. It might even just be down to the fact that so many children are so quickly just not consuming water in their diet and saying I don't like water because they're always having something like but. But squash is 80% washer.

13:00 I know, but like they. Aren't hydrating them it's. Probably still good to just, you know, make people like. But for those children, but and what I'm saying is they're going to be a bunch of children now who are just like I won't drink then and that's worse maybe and then because I haven't got the option to have the squash, which. They, yeah, I think, do you know what that point I had to have? Squash. I think we should come back to this point in general as well a few times, because I think there is a wider point here that we should talk about more, which is will any of these, this stuff make people make children not do X? Well, because I'm, I'm thinking as well of a lot of children out there, especially neurodivergent children who are very specific in their textures and what they eat and their repetitions who might be caught up in this as as blanket rules in primary schools. Actually, it means they're no longer able to eat those dinners. That's clearly an issue and we clearly need to, you need to provide children with some with some kind of sustenance. Do you know what I mean?

13:47 I, I agree. And I reckon obviously we're just going over the headline stuff right now. I think it would be ludicrous for those cases not to be considered in terms of like. How can you provide for just one like? Here's this just one plate of food. Well, how does that already happen? Do you know what I? Mean, I think, I think probably it's it's already the way dinners are now it's it's suitable. And if not, they have packed lunch. Maybe more more children will be forced to be have packed lunch, but it'll be more of an issue. You know, like if you're free school meals, you have to provide food for that child if it's within their needs, like where's the line? Like you have to provide for them. I agree. I think it's tough and I think schools are already having those tough conversations. Yeah, it's like a lot streamline that. Even if it just happens, even if it does end up happening a bit more, I still think schools are going to have to consider those tough outlying situations genuinely.

14:29 Let's crack on, let's keep going. So vegetables in 2014, schools had to provide vegetables and salad as an option across the week, but not necessarily with every meal. From now on, vegetables or salad mandatory with every single main meal including grab and go items like sandwiches, baked potatoes, pizza, baked beans. Pureed veg and potatoes do not count as vegetables. I couldn't be more behind that. Definitely absolutely right. Get the vegetables on the plate for the children all the time. If they're picky and don't eat them, OK, but some of them will get them on the plate for the kids. Absolutely. Expose them to them. They'll try, they'll try them. A lot of kids will realise that they're quite nice. Exactly, exactly. Do you? Know what it's what I needed when I was younger yeah, it's what I needed I was on free school meals and I was had my mom was a single parent just.

15:10 She would be the first person to say didn't really understand what a balanced healthy diet was for a child. And for me, she's want me to eat. That was the thing she only thought about ever was just needed to eat. I was a really fussy eater. Yeah, no surprises there. Why? I just brought up neurodivergent children being really picky about their food. That's what I literally experienced myself. And my mom was told by the doctors just eating better than not eating. Got to the point where they were just like, just give him food he will eat that's better for him. I got a school dinner. It had vegetables on the plate I'd never seen before. I went home to my mum like, well, they fed me these weird things. I didn't want to eat them very much. It's still introducing green trees. Yeah, exactly that. I ended up eating them still. I eat them now. Do you know what I mean? It was a good thing that was on my plate. Yeah. Even if in the moment it made me think, oh, what's this?

15:52 I had to be exposed to it. Yeah, absolutely. If schools are places of exploration and and you know, learning, then Yep, why can't we? Precisely Food. So that's vegetables, next one's fibre and whole grain. So 2014 starchy food required daily bread, pasta, rice, potatoes etcetera. But no rules on whole grain content. Now at least half of all pasta and rice must be brown, whole wheat or fibre enriched. All bread must contain at least three grammes of fibre per 100 grammes. Some really specific rules here. Only whole meal seeded and 5050 varieties. No added fat and bread. All I'm going to say, I don't think we should talk too much about this because we are not qualified fitness people or in terms of dietitians or anything like that. But all I will say is that to me, when I look at specific rules like this, it's it must. If it's grounded in research and it's better for the health of a child, then I'm OK with that.

16:36 Yep. Sounds good to me. Absolutely. I think so as well. Cool protein and meat. Let's go on. 2014 meat or poultry required on at least three days per week. Processed meat limited but still regularly available. Now, pulses like chickpeas, lentils and beans count as a main protein source alongside meat. By the way, don't get if that triggers you, grow up. They just are. That's just a fact. They're packed with protein. You don't get the same from Carol. No dealer. We, we the whole the whole of human history, we've been eating ox. OK, OK. But this is all. This is all we learned. It's still protein. Jesus. Honest to God. Must appear at least once a week across all menu options. Only one processed meat item per week, like sausages, ham, bacon and burgers. Or one battered, breaded bread crumbed pastry item.

17:19 Yeah, I, I look at that and I think why have we stopped at 1:00 per week? Like what? What only one process the week? Well, why why is it going down to 1? Because it's bad for them. Why have we got one then? Yeah, why is 1 on there? Honestly, that's probably the best analogy for why I think the 2014 thing came in from whatever it was before that. Sure, because it's a stepping stone. Yeah. Do you know what? In 10 years, I reckon we'll ban that. Yeah, let's push back. Yeah, potentially, potentially, because if you look at the list as well, sausages, bacon, burgers. Yeah. Very much a key part of most people's diets. Like. So if you're, if you're just a parent looking at this and you're thinking why can't they like. And it's probably reasonable, by the way. Yeah. Why can't Rory has sausages? He has sausages, Yeah. Do we have sausages every day? No, But he does eat sausages.

18:01 He's had a sausage. And again, it's that classic thing of my kids done it and they're fine. OK. Irrelevant. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. But it seems odd to me to just go to 1 like that. That seems weird. Maybe, like you're saying, it's a step. In I think so yeah, it just has to be reasonable, isn't it like some parents will be like, I can't I can't go. This is such a huge change to me. Whereas this might just bridge the change a little bit and Start learning and we learn more like I think there's so much more research out there now about like how bad some foods are. I reckon they'll bacon bacon. Yeah, is what I've learned. I feel like I've learned in the last couple of years in terms of like how how bad shop bought bacon is for you and the links it has to such horrible disease and things. But ultra processed foods and we'll come to that again probably later is like processed foods in general I think is something that I can feel the battle ramping up more and more and more in society.

18:44 I feel like I hear about it more often. It's often more on social media. People are more aware of processed foods and how genuinely absolutely awful they are for us. So I can imagine that even in five years will be something that gets reviewed again. And it's like we are just outright banning processed foods like this because it's it's dreadful. There was a book, I didn't read all of it. I read about half of it by Chris van Tuliken. I think he pronounced his name, but he's, I think he's one of the twin doctors you see sometimes on line 2 blokes. And they do, they do TV shows, do a lot of BBC about health and, and it's called ultra processed people. And it's about his journey through basically understanding about processed foods, etcetera, and how horrendous they are for us and how completely normalised it is to, to basically become just indoctrinated into eating them constantly.

19:25 And, and the front cover is perhaps, you know, provocatively is a loaf of bread because bread is horrendously. If you just bread, like you just buy a loaf of King's milk, right? If you look at the actual ingredients, it's horrendously processed. Yeah, because bread should just be three ingredients. Water, flour, yeast. And isn't it a thing that is even worse in America because that bread will last for like a month or something? At least our bread goes off and on. Four days if your bread doesn't mould after, after, you know, two or three weeks, yeah. What? It's not bread, mate. It ain't bread. But anyway, that's if anyone's interested in learning more about processed food, that book is is very, very good, easy to read as well. And I do just think that will keep rising. Hopefully it's, you know, it's a good thing we've come. It's great because do you know what?

20:05 I read it and I was, it was awful. Then I carried on eating process. Yeah. So we need, we need more of a push. And he has to just. Reduce it a little bit For me, I think I have genuine because I eat quite a lot of bacon. I love a bacon sandwich or bacon roll like classic Go to lunch if I'm just hungry. I'm a crunchy egg for breakfast. Not reduce that. No, no, we ignore. We did. You ever reduce that? Chocolate. We ignore chocolate, but I haven't really. Really, really, really care about my health. I don't know there's a process bacon anymore. Past that, chocolate. No, no, I'm not taking too much. I always say I'm absolutely, absolutely a victim of terrible cell control and I eat so much processed food and all that sort of stuff. But I definitely think even if it's just 10%, I have already actually subliminally reduced that just based on how like scared I am. But all this stuff I keep saying have. You found that because I, I, I, Maybe you were more of a normal person beforehand, but when? Since we had Rory, especially dinners. Since we had Rory, Yeah.

20:51 Just no. Just fueling. That fire a bit more. Me and my partner, which is not Hayden, had Rory. I found that our dinners in general are way more consistently nourishing and better in terms of we will cook, we will just cook from scratch, more food that we just all eat together because we want to eat together with him. So then we're thinking of, OK, what does he need to eat that's more healthy? We'll have the same thing. We'll we'll load our plate with veg because we want to load his plate with veg. It's almost like backhandedly through US wanting him to eat better at dinner times has made us all eat better at dinner times. No, not at all. I already ate in all seriously, I really said that. I said that to meme of you then, but genuinely not that much.

21:31 If anything thing it's made me enjoy the process of cooking dinner less because we eat earlier. That's different. No, but it's made me. It made it makes me. I used to spend longer cooking more elaborate meals with different ingredients in them. I find I do that way less weekly now and I just boil it back down to like a couple of veg, some potatoes and a meat. Or it's just something like quite simple because I just can't be bothered to start cooking at 330I. Love how we both ended up on the same dinner and because of our previous like what we did previously I'm like this is great and you're like. This is awful, I wanted to downgrade me and Lauren used to be way more explosive. Than. Cooking foods. And now I'm like, we have to eat at like half five and I'm like, yeah, sometimes these meals will take an hour and a half, but I'm not doing half meal. 334 o'clock.

22:16 No, it's not happening. No. So right, let's switch through the rest, shall we? Yeah, go. On cheese we're just going to that should just be banned anyway because it's disgusting. But in 2014 I hate cheese. If that wasn't across three, there was no specific limit on cheese based dishes at all. Now cheese based mains which like pizza paninis and things capped at twice per week. So again just that incremental went down government sites only 15% of children are meeting recommended saturated fats limits. Yeah, it's. Crazy cheese is nice though. Bit of a theme. Snacks. In 2014, nuts were on the permitted snack list for outside mealtimes. Now nuts have been removed and this is due to allergy concerns replaced by crackers and breadsticks without any added salt, sugar or fat. When I first read that, I thought what everything I hear ever is how amazing for you nuts are.

22:58 But it makes complete sense in terms of an allergy thing, Yeah. It's one of the only things where it's like it, it's a net loss in terms of nuts are really healthy for you. But ultimately people are like, everyone knows that nut allergy is one of the worst allergies. So obviously we could just control that and not have it around kids. So makes sense we'll take that loss of nuts being healthy for the sake of allergies. Definitely breakfast 2014. No specific Food Standards for breakfast clubs at all. Yeah, I know. They just had to broadly follow the general school Food Standards now. First ever dedicated breakfast standards. Low sugar cereals and plain unflavored porridge. Allowed pastries, fried potato products, processed meat. Eats honey and syrups. All bad. Rory loves honey in the morning. Yeah, that's a bit honey as Weetabix. I, I, that was the first one.

23:38 I when I was skimming through this earlier, I thought, that's the harshest one to me. Think, I don't think again. I can separate it. Yeah. I don't think it's a bad thing to make kids eat healthy breakfast. I think it's probably a very, very good thing. To do, of course it is. But even just having like a little bit, sometimes having like a little bit of honey on your cereal or whatever, it can make the difference between a child eating cereal or not or. That's funny. It's what I said. Earlier I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. And I think I'm like, I think that's a theme all the way forever. The reason that one jumped out as me as like, oh, I reckon that might have the most impact. Yeah, yeah. In terms of getting kids to eat. It's interesting, very interesting. I think it makes sense with the roll out of more breakfast clubs, yeah, that you have to have more, I think of specific dedicated standards. Because if you roll out more and more breakfast clubs, which by the way, I think it's a great thing that the government are doing, then you have to have really I think you should be more strict on what they're doing. That's for sure.

24:24 Enforcement and accountability. So back in 2014, there was no formal enforcement. Governing bodies were held responsible, but there was no actual monitoring going on, no compliance cheques, no consequences if you didn't comply. So essentially it was very strong guidance. Yeah, like do this, but we don't care if you don't. Exactly. But from now there's going to be a new formal monitoring system comes into place. In 2728 academic year, every school proposed to appoint a lead governor for school food, All schools to publish food policies and menus online for parent security. I don't. Know what you're thinking? I don't people thinking, yeah, more accountability. For schools, right? Yeah. More things for schools to do, more workloads. It's just Ofsted with a moustache. Hello. I'd like to just come and see if you've got sugar on your porridge. Sorry.

25:04 I'm Mr Fosted. You're. Not Ofsted, are you? No, I'm not. I'm fosted food, No. OK, you do look like the guy that came here last week judging me my English lesson. Oh no, not at all. Can you tell me the chronology of this porridge? Sorry sorry, I'm mixing up my scripts. What I mean is, can you tell me? Can you tell me the liber levels of this English lesson? Oh no, Jesus Christ. Oh no, God, I've been foiled. Yeah, crazy. But I don't know though. I think it's a good thing. Do you think? I think it's a good. Thing I'd be interested, but do you know what? Do you know what it is? Imagine Ofsted didn't exist and someone said we need some kind of formal monitoring body that can actually make school schools doing the right thing. And I think anyone in the country would be like, oh, that's bad.

25:44 Yeah, they'd be like that's great. So OK, benefit of the doubt. Oh sounds reasonable. Let's see what happens if someone comes around with a clipboard because there's two grammes of fibre. Too little in my in my kids bread. Then they can honestly get in the bin. But part of the process is we have to take samples from at least 12 children's stomachs after lunchtime and part of. The stool sample please. Can you poo in this bottle? Yeah, yeah. But I but in all seriousness, like the fact that they speak for itself the past. Surely they we had all these rules we've been to place in 2014 and kids health is the worse than ever, right, because there was no monitoring right? It probably screams at oh, maybe we should just maybe we should enforce it. A. Little bit. That's such a good point. Maybe we should check it. Yeah, It's been 10 years since this was introduced.

26:25 And let's look at where health is right now. That's awful. Does it make you think that even with this being introduced, it's not going to change because the vast majority of a child's eating habits is not showing a score? Let's talk about that now. I think it will make a much smaller impact than maybe people will think it will when you're reading this because it sounds kind of exciting. I think it will have an impact that is worth having, right? That's the way I see it. I think even if the impact is 5%, yeah, that is better than 0%. And I think that 5% is worth it because health of children as we know we talk about even separately PE and how that that needs to be put on more special. This is kind of in the same line of healthy children is so important, I think. Schools can have much more of an impact on the health of a child through PE lessons than they can through this. That's interesting.

27:08 Yeah, I, I think because if you think about exercise and how much you exercise, if you can, if you can do two, 2 1/2 hours a week in school of proper exercise with a coach, that can be enough. And that can be enough for a child. If you just get one dinner right a week where half the kids aren't even having the dinner because they brought their own packed lunch in, that is having a tiny impact compared to I think if we're going to, if we're going to, I don't not saying this is bad, I'm just saying if we're really focusing on the health of a child, we need to plough some money into actual physical exercise when it comes to actually being in school. Definitely. So that's just still compared to this a higher priority. Yeah, if I think so. And even though I just think about your analogy, it's interesting because because also pee's more enforceable in terms of like every any less, you've got to do the pee. You can't just choose to not do pee. You can't just choose to not do maths either. But in but with food, it is a bit more nuanced than that.

27:50 It's kind of like if you don't like the food, no one's actually going to go over and literally spoon that food into your mouth and force you to eat it. They might encourage you a lot, but there is a limit in terms of what you can do. So we can put all of the food things in the world in place, but ultimately, if a child literally then one has packed lunch because they don't want to eat any of it, or they're still having school dinners and they just choose not to eat and they go home and eat random other crap, there is there. There's a lot more limitations in terms of what we can have impact. Here's the last thing I'll say on this to try and make get my point across. How many fewer children do you think will be admitted to A&E because of tooth decay once this is brought in? Yeah, obviously I don't, I don't think children are getting tooth decay from current meals in school. Yeah. They're getting tooth decay because of habits outside of school and family habits around diet and what they're eating outside of school.

28:34 Yeah. I, I, I I can't see that. I can't see those statistics moving. And it's a shame because in 10 years time, let's say this is brought in and those statistics don't move because nothing else changes. I I think you're looking at, oh, well, this is pointless, wasn't it? Yeah, OK, no, not pointless, but it's not going to move the dial on those exact stats, in my opinion. That much so. By itself then just these changes alone to school with nothing around it, you don't think it'll make much that much impact? Do you think then it is absolutely vital that with these changes we have wider information going out to parents, wider going out to families to try and to change the culture? Because that's the way I see it. It's a yeah, this is the starting point and we use this as a vessel to really try and push out healthier eating to our communities. Maybe I'm cynical because the way I look at this is if you look at what actually needs to be done in order to really breakdown food habits for this nation, in terms of how many, how many people are eating completely unhealthily and horribly, which is the vast majority of people, by the way, have not really got an adequate diet. If you look at what needs to be done to tackle that, this is probably one of the easier things to do because you have control over a school.

29:38 You can say whether things are served or not and then you can look at it and go look what we did. This. Yeah, OK. If you really want to make that tooth decay number decrease for 5 to 9 year olds, if you really want to increase healthy habits for adults, if you really want to reduce obesity levels and overweight levels because of of health reasons and take strain off the long term with NHS in lots of ways, you have to do loads more to actually go to the core, which is the massive food companies who are producing food which is not remotely nutritionally viable. That is cheaper than the more healthy option in a shop. You need to educate people on what a healthy diet looks like, but you also need to make it easy. Sorry, need to make it less easy for someone just to walk into a Tesco, have a massive, you know, huge bag of Doritos there for a quid that they can say, oh, well, I could just buy that now and eat that whole bag.

30:27 And that would make me feel a bit full up. And it tastes nice and it's crunchy and it's great. Or I could go and spend one 1 LB on some fruit and veg and boil it in a pan and wait for it. And it doesn't really have that immediate impact to me. It's not great. Yeah. It's much easier for average Joe and including the whole family to have a much, much worse diet and to to tackle that. It's it's huge. Yeah. This won't tackle that. No, I I won't. I think going up against the multi billion pound corporations that can treat completely control our end game capitalistic lifestyles is incredibly difficult feat. I don't think it's something we should therefore therefore go Oh, we can't do it. So we'll just focus on this one thing. I still think we should try. I still think there was a time in history where smoking was completely widespread and normalised and and just saying, oh, you can't imagine this was a scenario that would be only brought in.

31:15 You can't smoke inside restaurants anymore. That's the. Only thing we did, that's the only thing we. Did is that wasn't really going to do much because people go outside and smoke. The kids will go home and eat the crap because nothing's changed in the culture. But when we took a huge stand against the literal billion pound corporations that controlled everything like they were powerful entities and said you literally like we are going to. Tax the massively. Tax the massively put these horrible pictures on the on the on the shops put them behind curtains and you can't see them anymore. All that stuff did actually do something so they clearly something can be done. It's difficult and whether we'll do it, I don't know, but I. Agree we're doing some stuff like, you know, recently there was the banned and advertisements before 9/9 PM and high sugar content because children can't see them television anymore.

31:58 That's fantastic. They're banning. Well, they, they delayed it, but it's on the process of coming in where you know, you know, you can get like multi buy deals on crappy food. It's like, oh, buy 2 biscuits for the price of 1 and packs of biscuits for the price, not just two biscuits for the price of one. Obviously that would make a consumer think I'll get that it's cheaper that's banned. So it's, you know, we are, we are bringing stuff in and I do think alongside it. That's fantastic. And just to let's clarify this before we just move on in terms of this conversation. Now we've talked about what's coming in and what it was before. I'm, I think that's a good thing. I just don't think like, like we said a million times before and lots of other situations, we've doubled maternity pay. Retention is fixed.

32:39 No, it's not. That's the low hanging fruit. It's not even great, not even amazing what you've done, but it's better than nothing. Cool. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. What I'm saying is to actually fix the problem you're pretending is fixed, we have to do 7 other things that harder. Same here to actually fix this problem. This is one small cog. Doesn't mean we shouldn't have that cog. If that small cog wasn't in the machine, the machine would break. But it's just a small cog. There are other bigger, more tough, tricky cogs to build and implement for the whole machine to get working. Very well articulated. I couldn't agree more. And there's one more, one more thing that may be in my idealistic world here, and this might not be true, that makes me think it's still going to passively have a really big benefit just doing the school thing. Because if we can hammer into these kids, drill into these kids that eating healthily is a good option and something they can do more than any other kid has before when they're adults, they might be the people to tackle this big capitalistic problem.

33:30 They might, it might not be our generation. We're maybe we're too far gone and we don't care enough because we do just like eating all this stuff. Maybe it's the next generation who we instil through good values, through school and, and, and eating habits as much as possible, even though we can't control all of it. And outside the home, outside the school, in the home, maybe they're the generation that will be like actually at school. Wait like this And I was forced to be like this. Why the hell are we not enforcing these standards across life in general? And maybe it's them, I don't know. It's the kids. The kids are the future, man. They are. They are the future. The future change and OK, maybe that's it. No, it's interesting. So we've got what's happening now. I wanted to talk about a bit of what I find a bit of a perception problem around school dinners. Yeah. And but this genuinely works both ways in terms of what people think school dinners are.

34:13 It's almost always not what they think. So there, there is some weird middle ground here. And it's not because it's always better. It's not because it's always worse. And the one thing I think back to is there was that video by Montana Brown. Yeah. And and yeah, went viral. Obviously a lot of teachers rightfully were replying saying you don't know what you're talking about, why you're saying this. Didn't you? You made a silly. I made a little video about it as well, basically because her, her point was, you know, she said why did why do kids need a sticky toffee pudding up for their dessert every single day at at as school dinner? Yeah, and, you know, obviously everyone who works in the school knows that just isn't what happens, right? But there's this perception that she has. Yeah, I know. We're still good. I get I get a free dinner for sitting with the kids. I'll be sitting with her every day. Hold the main.

34:54 I'll just have the sticky toffee please. I'm doing this for you kids. Give me all your sticky toffee puddings. It's bad for you. I'll eat them. But yeah, and and she mentioned about the everyday getting and it's like it's just not what happens currently. And it just made me think about the perception in general that what people think children are getting for their dinners in school, I don't think is what anyone thinks is happening. So let me just let me just outline what I'm saying here. There are some people who think school dinners just absolute rubbish, not nutritionally good at all. Just getting your sticky toffee puddings after be like what Matana Brown was saying. It's awful. No, there are standards. We just talked about what the standards were and they brought in 2014. There are standards that you have to go by to make sure children have a fair balanced meal. So that's not true, but also I do also think that some people might who are aware of those, those levels and those boundaries and say, OK, 2014 this came in, there was a whole Jamie Oliver thing that took away the Turkey twisters, right? It's obviously really, it must be really healthy now. I've seen a lot of school dinners that are rubbish. I mean, I started this podcast in 10 seconds saying that a very inflammatory sentence about how bad school dinners. Are so my point?

36:03 I wanted to throw this over to you now because it's all about a perception problem. Let's dive into then what, what, what is actually being put in front of our kids because you seem you're very, you've said this a million times. You're very passionate about this. Go on. Right, I'm going to just open it up a little bit because I said that inflammatory sentence to be to be a bit silly and funny. In my own little experience of teaching across three different schools, I have seen the full range. I have worked in a school where I thought the school dinners genuinely were pretty fantastic in terms of what was offered the the catering level for the children was genuinely brilliant and they got a beautiful range of food every day. I've also I worked in a school where the school dinners are so utterly genuinely disgusting and revolting that I wouldn't eat them if I was starving.

36:45 Like that's how bad and low quality of the food was. Like, I literally had days where I'd forgotten my lunch and the option was continue to have a rumbly tummy and just be hungry until 5:00 till you go home or eat the school dinner at the school, which is free. Yeah. And I was like, I would rather not eat that even though I'm hungry. So just to dive in a bit more of what you're saying here, because I think this is so important. It's so important. It's about quality. Yeah. It's about quality of food as well. Because I know exactly what you mean in terms of, you know, that dinner could have been right. Let me just describe what this kid dinner could have been. A a homemade spaghetti bolognese with maybe there's some carrots that have been cooked on the side and maybe even some peas is an option that you can have. And the, the, the dessert might be very low sugar Jelly and a bit of natural yoghurt and some fruit. Sounds like a lovely different whole grain pita bread over there as well.

37:36 You can use if you, if you do the whole grain pita, you can take the salad bar. You can just get from that. And, and this is where it comes in with perception and quality. Because that sounds look, that's fantastic to me. Sounds like a great, nice, good meal to give to the children. You could see that though and still not want it. Right. Yeah, because the. Yeah, exactly that. You could say on the menu item could say spaghetti bolognese, but the quality of that food was atrocious. It was disgusting. I don't know what. I don't even know how you can make food that bad. I don't know what they were doing, what they were cooking with. Maybe, you know, there must be low quality ingredients or not a variety of ingredients batch cooked in a way that wasn't actually suitable. I don't know what was happening. All I know is the end product was disgusting and not suitable for children. And we're serving it this slop up to them. Do we eat every day?

38:17 And then the school down the road is having lovely meals like the the inconsistency the the range across schools to me is completely unacceptable. It's, it's sad as well because you think, I think about how important children not being hungry is. Let's just park that for a minute on its own. I'm not going to add any more context to that. I don't want children to be hungry. So the quality of the food needs to be good to make them want to eat it. But again, if you think about the education system as well, like we are teachers, at the end of the day, halfway through the day, children get hungry and they need to go and have their dinner. They go and have their dinner. They're coming back on a crappy dinner that they didn't enjoy whatsoever. And then I've got it next day as well because maybe they're on free school meals. It's just what they get. If you like an Olympic kid, it's that or nothing. And what we're serving them is terrible quality. They're not going to focus for the rest of the day. They're not going to be full.

39:04 Let's nourish our children properly and give them good quality food. Do. You know what the reality was in this situation and this this circles back nicely to something we've been saying all the way up for this podcast and we can talk about it more. Is what actually happened for a lot of the time is those kids just didn't eat it. Yeah, completely. They just didn't eat it. Yeah, they would just they just went hungry. It was disgusting. Or, you know, if they were lucky enough, they would sometimes be an option to have like a they had like a base meal that's like they can have a Jack potato instead if you want instead of whatever them every day you can have a Jack potato instead of the meal. Maybe that was the option and they they always pick the jacket potato because the meals are so disgusting. At least they can eat a potato. How that's like that actually makes me a little bit like I actually feel sad. Yeah. Like I genuinely make that upsets me because I'm like, how is that happening? Yeah, in schools. Yeah. Like that's crazy. And that happened in my experience.

39:44 I've only worked in three. What's the chances I got the one school that worked the works like that? Of course it's not that that means it happens everywhere. Of course it does. It's crazy. So. Throwing it to you then, what makes a school dinner good? Because we've talked about quality of ingredients, we've talked about actual nutrition levels. We've talked about what we haven't talked about, but we can include portion size quite often. They're tiny portions as well that we're giving the kids. Really. I know they're only little, but it's small. What what's your opinion? What makes a good school dinner then, if you summarise? I'm going to sort of bat this off the government firstly to say that that their view on this is it's not just about being healthy because I think there is another Ave where it's like you can make it so healthy that actually it's not. No one even wants to eat it. And we get back to that situation. I just said of eating it. That's what I mean. Yeah, it needs to be appealing, is what I've said.

40:25 Appealing, familiar and fulfilling. Yeah. I think a balance exists where you use hearty ingredients, fresh ingredients, a variety of ingredients that are nice and maybe by themselves. Kids go, oh, no, I've never had a celery before. OK, well, you know what? It's just, it's a fresh ingredient that's part of this Bolognese that's now in here. It can be familiar in terms of, like you said, it's still a Bolognese. You know what a Bolognese, It doesn't have to be this crazy meal you've never heard of before and it's just presented in this way you've never seen because no one ever eats this in real life. But it's got all these roasted Peppers are all around here and it's on this our bread you've never seen, which has been toasted. It's like. It's a mushroom from the depths of Tokyo. Yeah, healthiest mushroom in the world.

41:06 It's like, well, OK, but the kids don't know what the hell this is. They just want familiar. Thank you. Yes. Very well, exactly right. And I think there is a middle ground is what I'm trying to say is I think they're not wrong to say you can make appealing, familiar, fulfilling meals that are healthy that don't actually put kids off. And that I think is the point we're trying to make. When we brought up, we talked about all the healthy stuff to begin with, then the perception. But the quality has. To be as well exactly the quality exactly that, because we know what does exist right now, which is the worst of both worlds, which is meals that meals that are familiar but they're so disgusting that kids still don't even want to eat them. Like then the quality is so bad they don't even want to eat these meals that look like they should want to eat them completely. That's crazy. I'd rather have a world where kids saw meals that looked a bit unfamiliar and I'm not sure how to eat that, but at least they are really healthy and tasty and nice and quality rather than meals.

41:54 They look like they should be eaten, but they're disgusting. And the best option is both. Yeah, just both, which is what the government's actually trying to propose, which I think is good. Let's have healthy meals that look nice and are nice. OK, couple of things then just let's think about rounding this off a little bit, this conversation now. Couple of things I want to talk about. One thing I want to talk about is free school meals in general, but we'll come back to in a second. OK, we will, we will. We'll finish on that. Free school meals, cool. I want to talk about a couple of things which kind of link together here, which is catering companies. Yep. Obviously, depending where you are in the country, you have a different catering option. Even within the same jurisdiction. Sometimes you'll have different caterers who offer different meals, different quality. So there's a bit of post code lottery going on. And within that post code lottery of you just happen to be here where we just happen to have this deal with this catering company who happen to be good or bad. Within that as well you also have some schools that have a kitchen where food can be freshly prepared for them and some that don't.

42:46 They don't even they don't have cooking facilities, they have to get the food brought in every morning pre prepared somewhere else off site brought into the school. To me that it it doesn't matter honestly. We can implement everything we want as long as that exists as a complete post code lottery. And some schools don't even have a kitchen. Yeah, there's always, always going to be a tiered system. 100% You know how? You know how there's always this fight and we were surprised that some schools don't have libraries and there's always funding to pick up libraries built into schools because it's ridiculous. The notion of a school not having a library is so absurd that we can't even fathom the idea it should be. And I passionately believe this. The same with kitchens. It's a school. There's hundreds of hundreds of people at this place all day.

43:29 What do you mean there's not? Imagine going to any private place where the expectation is you'll have it You're you're there all day and they have no facilities to eat. And and it doesn't happen. Let's take it to the next level as well, because we've got to remember that in a school, it's the duty of a school for a portion of those people who go there to feed them. Yeah, exactly. It's even further along. It's. Not even an option. No, it's like, it's like you get free school meals from this establishment. Yeah, because that's built into the funding that we give to your school, right. Or if that was the case, Can you imagine that case anywhere else where you're like, yeah, you get a job and we feed you, we give you food and there's nowhere to have the food mate, and it's children. It's like, it's insane how it's normalised to me because the quality obviously drops off. No one can tell me otherwise.

44:11 It does, obviously does. It's not freshly prepared. Maybe I'm biassed because of my own experience more than is reasonable, right? But those analogies I gave earlier of the schools I've worked in, the one where the food was really nice, they had a kitchen in the school and it was cooked fresh there. The one where the food was so repulsive and discussing that I wouldn't feed it to a pig. OK. And we're expecting children to eat it farm and we're expecting children to sit there and eat it, which they didn't want to do most of the time. By the way, surprise, surprise, didn't have a kitchen. And it was a, a private catering company whose whose goal is profit. Obviously, because it's a company. I'm not saying company shouldn't make profit, but that just the nature of it means that food was not as good. It just wasn't. And they're catering for loads of different schools. And you can, you can have a catering company that makes profit in the school that has a kitchen.

44:53 So we of course you can. But but what you're you're literally saying the cost of the transportation. What what do you think that comes out of thin air? Yeah, exactly. Obviously it has to have a detriment effect not only on on the quality of the food in the 1st place but also just the food itself. Once it's brought on site, it's travelled across a in town. Obviously it's not as good when you get a Deliveroo compared to when you go and sit. If I go and have a Nando's in the restaurant, it's way nicer than ever get a Nando's delivered home. Yeah. Do you know why? Because it's fresh. It's just gone off the griddle and it's served in front of me immediately compared to packed into someone's back, back of their moped with seven other people's dinners curried around the like It's. It's. Everyone knows that's better so I am very very passionate and would absolutely be on be on board for campaigning for every school should have a kitchen where they can cook and prepare food and if and if the problem is oh where's the money find it.

45:42 Honestly honest to God it's our children we are talking about what there's money for plenty of things in this society. I'm sure something can be knocked down the priority list to give kitchens to schools so that kids can be fed properly. The kids that are next generation. It is absurd. If you have the argument genuinely, you're a moron. If I actually think that if someone says, oh we just can't afford schools, we can't afford to give schools kitchens, we're honest to God. Whatever you think it is stupid, reprioritize it. I'm I could not be more passionate about the idea that we can obviously find money to build kitchens in schools. I'd, I'd love to talk to someone like that genuinely who thinks that and just say what's what's on your list. Yeah. Was it because there's two, there's two things, right? Either we do have the money for it, but we're putting it somewhere else and then we're like, OK, well, let's reprioritize them because I think this should be higher up than XYZ and we can have a nice discussion about that. The other option is that we have we literally don't have money. We agree on this.

46:33 We agree on the priority list, but kitchens for schools genuinely comes on the priority list somewhere where their funding has run out. OK, tax something more than yeah, find the money. Find the money from do it. So you're the government. Do something If if schools having a kitchen yeah, is past the what we've got funding for. We don't have enough funding. Yeah, we need to get more funding. And I think you're being too kind even in this analogy, because I don't think that even. Is no, I know, but I'm, I was just saying imagine, imagine the situation where genuinely we all agree on the priority list, because I don't think kitchens for schools is actually number one of where the taxpayers money should go. I think I can think of a few things that should of course should have them first, IE you know, free healthcare that costs a lot of money. So, but there is some, let's just say it comes like, OK, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

47:17 But the, the IT OK. It comes down to we borrow more, we tax more. We don't get the thing. We have to have the thing. I think that that's, that's my opinion. You might have a different opinion that we don't need the thing. And I'd argue with you and I think you're wrong. Yeah, but in my head, we need the thing. So we either have to borrow more or we have to tax more. Don't think we should be borrowing much more. No, to be perfectly honest with you, because then it's independent of interest later on down the line. Tax more. No one likes to hear that word. No tax more. Look at almost every European country and the way they run and the way they do things. They are taxed at a higher rate than we are. People look at our tax system right now and go, we're taxed more than we've ever been taxed in this country. That is true. That is true. But there are also other countries, societies that thrive and provide more for their people because tax goes up, OK, tax goes up. Providing for me as a person in this society goes up. It's not a 0 sum game.

48:12 If I, if I OK, I spend more tax. Kids get better meals. Yeah, Yeah. I didn't personally get anything from that tax going up. No. No, you didn't personally. But your children? Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And as long as that's the case, I think people's only legitimate worry based on the how the country's been run for the last 15. Years. I agree with this by the way. Is that no one's convinced any but most people are convinced that when we when taxes go up, nothing actually improves because it just goes it lines the pockets of private industries. And you know what, genuinely, genuinely, I actually really get that. And, and when I, This is why I, you know, usually I'm quite forthcoming about just saying people need to get over stuff with tax going up. It's not a comfortable conversation. You see a lot of waste in the system right now can be really frustrating when taxes go up and you don't see anything.

48:54 Taxes have gone up for the last 10 years and I've seen quality of standards of living go down. Exactly. So I can see why people putting two and two together here and being like, okay, well don't tax me more if it's going to get worse. Exactly that, I think, which is completely reasonable. I think most genuinely most people, no matter their political side, if you actually said to them and you could guarantee that, OK, you're going to pay an extra penny of, of tax on, on, on the pound, right? And it's guaranteed that that is going to directly fund children in schools for whatever it is, whether it's kitchens or being fed in some other way. I actually think most people would be like, if it was guaranteed, there's no scepticism at all. They'd be like, that's a fair trade. It's just that in reality, it's in reality, most people are only put off that by that because they think that's probably not. Not gonna happen. But and some people, fundamentally, I've seen a lot of people literally fundamentally say that their tax money shouldn't be going to other people's kids.

49:39 So there are some people who have a fundamental problem with that for sure. But I think a lot of people would think exactly, let's just do that, which is what I'm saying. I just think a lot of people. And this kind of comes back to the last point I wanted to make here now. So let's finish off on this. Free school meals. Yeah, there's a lot of chat. Like, for example, in London, every child gets free school meals, something the Mayor of London did, Sadiq Khan brought that in. Every child in London gets free school meals. Yeah, it's something that I've seen some individual schools implement. For example, there'll be some children, sorry, some schools who have more of a budget because they're in a more of a deprived area. Yep. And they've made the decision, actually, such a vast majority of children are free school meals and pupil premium that we just roll out everyone's we can actually, we we can afford this. It's for everyone right here. And then we know, Yeah, I know school to do that. And it every single situation I've seen where it's been implemented, it seems to have been a good thing. It has to come alongside quality meals that we just talked about. There's nobody giving out free school meals. And it's crap and no one wants it because that is a waste of money then.

50:32 So it has to come alongside stuff. But this this caught my attention this week because you'll notice in the last, you know, I'd say even just three months, the Green Party have soared in popularity. So we've seen reform completely sorted in popularity. We talked about that a bit. I think it's also only right we talk about the Green Party and what they're actually talking about because they are very, very popular. And again, we talk about the the cross section of people who are teachers way more of our audience listening right now, we'll be looking at green policies and thinking, Oh, I support that, that that is just that it's just a fact of how the votes are spread. So they mentioned that recently they announced some policies that they wanted to bring in, in terms of, you know, if they had the chance to, they'd bring in these policies to help with the cost of living.

51:14 Because their point is the cost of living is not something we just have to live with. It's something we can actually action and, and, and help ourselves out of essentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one thing they mentioned was free school meals for everyone. So they, they are basically saying it's, it's not just, you know, your background, it's if you are a child in primary school or secondary school, you get a free meal. It's as simple as that. I have been an advocate for this for a long. Time I was about to say that. So I you know we can start with your. Your face, yeah, sure. I think it's a no brainer. Idealistically, ideologically, yeah, I think we should absolutely be striving towards that, definitely. Whether it's doable in one fell swoop, I don't know, but I don't think that should be the reason to not do it, if that makes sense.

51:57 I absolutely think feeding children, it just sounds so weird when you say it because it feels so obvious. Feeding children should be something we do as a society and are proud of. Yeah. Like that, that's kind of the end of the statement really, which is kind of what you said for years, to be honest with you. Yeah. OK. So can I, can I read you a couple because obviously London did it. Yeah, so I've got, we've got some stats here about it. So this will be interesting just to put across this to we can maybe think afterwards is it worth it, But is it a good thing? So London already does this. The mayor funds Universal. That sounds like he's doing it personally. No, he's made a policy that does this at universal free school meals for everyone. At state primary schools in London, families save over ��500 per pupil per year because obviously they're not buying their own lunches for them. 84% of parents say that it helped household finances, 55% said their child now tries new foods because of it. I love what I've been talking about. However, based on the evaluation in December 2025 from London, it found no measurable boost in attainment. The research has warned short term effects are difficult to detect.

53:02 Cool. Don't care, right? Honestly, don't care. It seems like the most I don't care. What does that have to do with? I love that you said that's my gut reaction was like, that's weird. That's like you might as well have just said to me. But studies, studies have shown that children's shoe sizes haven't changed in the last 50 years as a result of this change. Like, OK, I don't care. Have shown that there are still the same amount of birds flying over the school building. Do you know what studies should show is that? That children are eating food? I know that's what that's about. Families have saved money. So, yeah, do you know what? Yeah, there's another statute. There's actually. Literally that was there. Like attainment, for God's sake. What's? Wrong with that care about attainment that. Results have not changed, therefore we're scrapping up. Doing it. Oh my God, isn't that I just don't care?

53:44 I don't care. And if you care you should stop caring. You have been sucked into this world of thinking attainment stats are the only the be all and end all of children. I've just listed six ways this has been good, but we've not seen a measurable boost in attainment. Stop. Scrap it. Kids don't need broccoli anymore. Insanity. I just don't care so. Some analysis from 2022 suggested that for every ��1.00 invested in providing these meals to all children in Universal Credit households, ��1.38 would be returned over 20 years through social, health and educational benefits. OK. So if we want to try and measure it, there are going to be some things that say IT projects to give your money back.

54:26 Basically the overall argument I would say here is that ultimately everything we've said holistically the child eats that's good, the family save money, that's good, blah blah blah blah blah. If you want some kind of well it's the taxpayers money. It's irresponsible where kids family should just be able to feed their own kids before they say it complete not I just think it's a nonsense thing to say. OK whatever. If you need something though, there seems to be also quite a bit of research that said this is an investment as well. It's an investment because in the long term it should. If we, if we nourish our next generation, the next generation grow up to be maybe a little bit more. If you need this by the way, just saying if you need this that they do more in the.

55:07 Workforce. You know what, crack on with those stats. If that's what's needed to just like to tip perhaps to the people that only care about capitalism and money, that's cool. Crack on. Let's just get those people happy and they can shut up and go somewhere else so we can actually deal with the problems with people that actually care about stuff. So cool you go enjoy that little stat. Don't really care about you all those. Stats OK, so last thing, last thing then on this just throwing it back to you now then, because I I do struggle with this, I land on the side of let's just give everyone dinner because they're kids. OK, But that I think that is genuine, good, decent, thoughtful pushback that says the child of a multi millionaire does not need the state to be paying for their lunch. Yeah. I honestly, I, I, I don't even, I don't really think I have a come back to that because I think that's true. What do you think?

55:48 There's 2 levels to this. Number one, I think it's a very reasonable thing to stay that we should maybe do this in increments and levels. Like for example, we just kind of glossed over this 2026. From September 2026, government is expanding free school meals to all pupils whose household receives Universal Credit, which which will have an estimated 500,000 additional children being left lifted out of poverty and getting those free school meals. That's a really good step and that isn't every single child now gets it. So that's good. But in that situation of like going to the extremes of the multi millionaire, I think it, I, I genuinely think it's, it's, it's more of an issue with how we view whose problem something is like the ownership of a child, because it's your child, it's your problem. Whereas we could just take it from the stance of the child's not a millionaire.

56:30 None of those children are. They're all equal. It's a legal level playing field at the perspective of just the children. They all just get access to food. Well done. Wow, your parent has loads of money. OK, that other parent who only earns 100,000 lbs, they have a tenth of the millionaire. They're also probably fine. But at the end of the day, let's strive towards the end goal being regardless of that, let's just feed kids, right? We'll start by having increments where we when we do factor in the money, OK, let's start with the people on Universal Credit, then we'll expand, then we'll expand and get to the point where everyone. Could just, but if we start with that, why would we carry on expanding? Like if the point being we would just reach the point where we're expanding 2 millionaires children maybe so, so So what you're saying, what you're saying is we'll get to the point where everyone but anyone who earns over 1,000,000 quids getting a free school meal. There's a chunk of children whose parents earn over ��1,000,000.

57:17 But I'm going to keep going because the end goal is everyone gets free school meals. That would seem like an insane step but I am still also sat here saying let's just give him free school meals. So my point is it seems a bit like a paradox here where if we just slowly increment it up there would clearly be a point where I'm like Oh my God no don't spend any more taxpayers money on that. Richard Bransons grandchild does not need me to spend my tax money on him having his lunch. But also I am also sat here just saying let's just give kids free, free meals. So, so there's a way Paradox said I don't feel it's been solved. So and and the line, if you draw a line, you'd always have to justify it somehow. Yeah, I do think that if you look at what families are saving, I, I, I feel strongly that we should be encouraging families to have children. So if you think about my household, for example, Roy would not be eligible for free school meals. However, if he was, it would be nice to save that money and then spend it on him in some other aspect. Maybe I'll take him on some trips to, to to enhance his understanding of something.

58:11 Maybe it'll just go towards our heating bill so he's warm at home. Like because you you don't have to be mega rich to still feel the you know, you can also can still feel the pinch and and not be really, really in in Yeah. Totally. I think I'm going to try and word it again because I still don't think, I don't think there's as much of A paradox there as as maybe you do because I don't. I think it's again, it's a perspective thing. I think we could reasonably completely disassociate the the idea of how much a parent earns eventually with the the mantra from a government perspective of it's we, the government of this country, we feel that it's our burden, our responsibility that children are fed at school. And that is just a blanket thing and it and it doesn't matter like the other, they're just not. That's fine. By the way, I, I, I really, I really don't disagree with that. The only time where I'm saying a paradox came in was where your point of just creeping up and up and up and up because because it seemed like creeping up from the point of not when people get it. Let's give extend its Universal Credit, let's extend it to people earning 25 grand or less.

59:06 Let's extend it to people earning 50 grand or less. That act of of of progressively going up that way seem to me as if it would definitely hit a point where even I, as someone who says everyone should get a free school meal, even I would say, well, let's not do the next. Jump Yeah, sure. I I think those increments in reality would have to be a lot smaller and they wouldn't, they wouldn't be sorry. There'll be so many of them. I think realistically, the bigger increment, we've probably already done them. Like it really it's gone from no one's getting it to some people are getting it to this one where it's like anyone's been Universal Credit. There might be be one more step that we do just to try and help families who are literally in poverty, right? And then it's at that point, it's then the final leap, which is cool. All children. It's not, it's not suddenly like, oh, you. Weren't that's. Fair. It is just the fundamental people who are in poverty, whose kids aren't even being fed, let's make sure we sort them out as priority because that is genuinely fundamentally essential that those kids get food because they're not getting food. Once everyone's getting food to some extent, then we just go cool now.

59:56 Now the government says it's our responsibility we feed kids. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a bad thing. And I also don't think, by the way, just be really clear. Hilarious. I contradict myself. I don't even think it's a bad thing if we did stop at the incoming works. Like we're just making sure as a baseline, the government say everyone gets fed and then the the millionaires do have to sort themselves out. Yeah, I don't think that's bad either. I just think it's quite nice. It'd be nice. I'd be proud as a as a culture to say we take the burden on feeding our kids as a culture, irregardless of your family's social status. And also that millionaire has probably paid for half the kids to have their Yeah, exactly. There you. Go so they can have that kid can have. Friends yeah. So I, I just to bring it all back, I still think every child should just be able to eat. And I think alongside these changes, I think alongside other policies that are coming in and also policies that I think should be coming in and we should tackle it more head on. I think your analogy to do is smoking and saying, well, actually do you know what?

1:00:44 At one point this was absolutely fine and we and, and it was, we did have to take on multi billion # corporations and we did it. We taxed stuff higher to, to make people not not spend as much. We did public health campaigns. I think all of that is happening. I think more needs to be done. Sugar tax, Exactly. That didn't exist before, and now it does. It's doing something. And all it did was made me poorer because I've, I've not drank less of that. It's really addictive. Yeah, just made me really, really, really poor. So I appreciate that. But no, it I think there's, there's definitely, definitely stuff to do. I think this is a step in the right direction. More kids should get food in general, just based on what we just said. But it should be quality food. It should be healthy food, hearty, fulfilling. Let's just feel like. It's properly.

1:01:25 This is a good change. It's a good policy. Well done Labour. We're very we could seek everything. Yeah, I think this is a good move. 100 percent, 100%, Absolutely, Absolutely. If only we could go. And speak to her. That'd be so cool. If we could, that'd be so. Good. If we could do that at some point, yeah. I wonder if. Wonder if we'll get that opportunity Wink wink, nudge nudge. Find out more soon. TuneIn, next time, see ya to eat, teach, leak, repeat without the eat. See ya.