Is the School Meals Scheme worth it?
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The Free School Meals Programme. So this is a programme that started almost six years ago. It started back in 2019 and initially it was rolled out in about 30 schools, 30 DESH schools. Since then, it has expanded massively. It now feeds about 350 odd thousand children.

children. And it is present in over 2000 schools up and down this country. But is it any good? Is the food any good? This is a question I put to people on social media, my own Instagram, at Cudahy Ciarán earlier, in advance of the discussion we're going to be having. And here's just a flavour of some of the responses. My niece calls the pesto pasta soapy pasta. Too much plastic packaging says somebody has poor quality processed snacks, cheap quality ingredients.

Another says... ...the assessment from somebody else. So...

kind of wide-ranging views expressed on Instagram 087 1400 106. I want to hear your views because we're going to come back to this a little bit later as well as discussing it now. So, have you been able to access them? Does your school have them? If so, what issues have you had? What's the quality of food like? What's the variety? Are they actually eating them? If

They have been a godsend in your house. I want to hear about that too. So like I say, 087 1400 106. Trina Golden is with me now. Trina is the principal of Own a Boy Educate Together National School in Cargilline in Cork. Trina, you're very welcome to the show. So talk us through your experience of rolling out the system in your school and how it has gone down.

Hi, Ciarán. Thanks for having me. Obviously, this has been huge over the last few days in the media and in social media, and you're kind of getting bombarded with it left, right and centre, I think. And I suppose the overall thing that I'm seeing when I'm scrolling Instagram and so on is it's overwhelmingly negative. And I suppose it's just important for me to maybe share some of our experience and to just say that,

been a very positive experience for us. The scheme for me was very important. Personally, I feel the

focus on ensuring every child in the country has a hot meal at least once a day is very necessary. And in terms of the rollout, I completely appreciate a lot of the concerns around, you know, food quality and accountability and all of that side of things. But for us, it's been overwhelmingly positive. The

range of food is good, the options are solid, any leftovers where say a child is

out thick and they don't have time to cancel it, the staff eat them. You know, so we eat the food and taste it regularly. We're not just kind of saying it based off the look and it's decent. You know, it's not, certainly not gourmet restaurant stuff, but it's a good hot meal for what you get. We've about, I would say currently,

somewhere around 70% of kids that are eating them consistently and the other 30% who it wasn't for them, you know, maybe they are that bit fussier or maybe they have certain sensory needs and so on. Then we just ask the parents to unsubscribe and the food doesn't get delivered. So that kind of manages that side of the waste issue, which I know is a big concern for some people. It's been straightforward. The company has been good to work with.

I guess no complaints. Trina, in your school, have you got facilities to keep the food warm or does it come warm? I know it depends on the school, the kind of service you can rely on. So how does it work in your school?

I think that's one of the biggest issues, I suppose, with the media thing is we're just conflating all the providers, which, you know, in a system like this doesn't work. But I suppose we have ovens that were installed. We have an operator who heats the food. So the food comes in in the morning and it's heated by the operator itself.

two hours a day and then it's delivered hot to the classrooms in boxes which keep it hot. So if, for example, you know, the class aren't finished or it's 10 or 15 minutes before they're ready to eat, then it's in the boxes keeping it hot. But generally, you

You know, it is hot. I think to the point that we need to deliver it a few minutes early for it to cool down enough for the kids to eat. So the heating hasn't been an issue. And how does it... Because we don't have it in our school yet, so I have no experience. Do you pick at the start of the week or the start of the month? Or how do...

parents decide what they want. Yeah. So the parents have an app. You give two days notice of any changes. So there's a menu on the app. There's a range of different foods every day. So it's not the same...

menu five days a week. You know, for example, one of our most popular meals, mostly among the staff, is the cottage bake. Sorry, don't treat me like a salad. This is great for the staff as much as anything. Oh, honestly, there could be fights over a leftover cottage bake, my staff are like, but that's only available on Wednesdays and Thursdays. And then, say, on Fridays, there's more. There are goujons and a veg pizza thing available on Fridays that wouldn't be available other days in the week. So, yeah,

So it's like a treat on a Friday being the idea. Yeah, that sort of thing. And the parents then, you do have to give two days notice to change things.

You know, if your child's not eating, whatever, they didn't like it, then you just change it. But you can also just set it up to recur the meals every week if it's working for your child. So the app is very user-friendly. It's child-friendly. There's pictures and stuff on it that the kids can kind of see what they're ordering. So from that side, it is...

It's a good level. Yeah, so it's worked well, obviously, in year school and continues to work well. If there was anything you could change about it, what would you tweak?

I look like if we were talking, you know, start again. And I know a lot of the concerns are around that side of there being ultra processed food and that sort of thing. I am not a nutritionist. I do not have qualifications in that area. And I'm not in a position to evaluate quality food. You know, I'm going on what the company is telling me and the information they're sharing. And, you know, they sent an email this morning to try to reassure people about their ingredients and so on after the media recently. But, you know,

I think that accountability piece is what's missing and that's what is causing a lot of the concern and the conflation you know like there are I

I'm not sure how many, but I'm sure there are over 20 companies around the country, if not more, you know, involved in this. I'm sure there's a significant variation company to company as to how they do it and ingredients and so on. I do feel there needs to be some level of accountability or regulation. And sorry, Trina, as a school principal, do you sign up to one company for one year or are you kind of locked in for five years? It's a three-year contract. Okay. Yeah.

Okay, so if the food wasn't great or whatever, after the three years, you could go and look for another provider. That's it. And look, there's a big range and it depends on your facilities. Like I know of a school where, schools where they have space on site. So there's a company that comes in and everything is made fresh on site, which is ideal. You know, that's where you want to be. We, unfortunately, in temporary accommodation don't have that luxury. So it is, you know, our best option is the meals coming in to us.

packaging and waste like there's a lot of talk about that online are the packaging is compostable and then they have a reusable lunchbox where it goes home so that the parents can see

if they've eaten or how much they've eaten and so on so that they can change it if they're not. Like, waste is going to be an issue to some extent. We're not talking about getting rid of it. You obviously want to be looking at how you minimize it. You know, and again, there's a need for someone to be managing that with the companies, I'm sure. But it's not something I can do as a school principal or 3,000 principals can do individually. So...

Peter, after getting in touch, my daughter's in senior infants and is a picky eater. However, she loves the food she gets in school and seeing all the other kids eating their meals actually helps her not to be picky about it. Great selection. You can change it regularly. Somebody else says, observing the school overall, the older years are very hungry and they gobble it up. The younger years are a bit fussier.

But somebody else says, I'm a primary school teacher and the waste of the hot lunches in our school is sickening. The amount of food that's paid for and then wasted and binned is outrageous. To think that schools are crying out for funding in many areas and then watch this money wasted on food. I understand that originally this was mainly targeted at DASH schools where children may be coming to school hungry, but it's not necessary anymore.

in every school. So as a plurality of views on the text line, Wendy Grace is with us as well. Trina, the broadcaster. Wendy, you're welcome to the show. You don't have this in the school that your kids attend, but it may be forthcoming. Have you misgivings about it?

Yeah, I've been pretty proactive already since we've had so much discussion on it. And I totally agree with Trina there. You know, a school principal shouldn't be expected to be a nutritionist. That's not their job. They've enough on their plate. And I can't understand for, you know, a scheme that is going to have what it's rolled out to all schools, you know, hundreds of millions of euros of government funding, how there isn't proper oversight, especially when there's

experts like Professor Donal O'Shea, who's the HSE's clinical lead for obesity. So people who are connected to the government who are saying we can't be having ultra-processed foods under this scheme. I know Ruth Hegerty from UCC did research and just one of the meals she gave an example of, she said there were 75 ingredients with processing ingredients

Additives like citrate, don't even know what that is, xylitol, dextrose, maltodextrin. I suppose the overall point is, as Serena was saying there, it depends on the school that you're in and how can we be in a situation where there's government funding being provided, but there isn't a kind of proper oversight and accountability looking at the basic standards. And I know that

like you had today, Ciarán, people messaging you, various nutritionists I follow have said they're literally getting hundreds of messages from concerned parents where they're saying, look at the list of ingredients or even around the transparency of is the full list of ingredients being given? Um,

we have an opportunity here that we can provide a nutritious meal to children, but I think that that's obviously not happening in most schools. And here's the thing that's most frustrating is obviously, as you said, this has been piloted for a number of years. Surely that's the point where you kind of evaluate, talk to parents, talk to principals. I think if you're a provider of these school meals,

there should be a basic standard on certain ingredients that just are not, that are just blacklisted and anything that kind of qualifies as those ultra-processed foods, which we're learning a lot more about. And the reason ultra-processed foods sell so well is because of the additives in them. We like the taste of them. They are addictive. So giving these to primary school children, it's going to make, I mean, I know I, as a parent, I'm like, great, I can't wait till it comes into the school. I hate making school lunches. But ultimately, if they start eating stuff that's,

affecting their palate and what they will and won't eat, that's actually going to be, end up being something that's even more difficult in the long term because they're going to have the taste for those kind of processed foods and it'll be harder for us to kind of cook the healthy stuff for them at home. So I'd be worried about that as well. Yeah, isn't there a danger though that there's a kind of a bit of a moral panic kind of develops around some of the, like you acknowledge it at the start, you don't even know what some of these ingredients are. A lot of those kind of

You know, we lump them all in together, ultra kind of processed food and all these kind of additives. But a lot of the additives are just there to kind of preserve it. So it lasts long enough to reach our children's plate without going rotten and things like that. They're not. Yes, there are things that are sometimes added that will kind of tweak the taste or that maybe make the food taste that bit sweeter or want us to eat more of it. And these things are dangerous. But a lot of them are not that dangerous.

I would argue, though, that they shouldn't be getting a meal that has 75 ingredients in it. The whole point is it's hot, nutritious, as fresh as it can be. And it's frustrating when you see, because I was researching just some of the providers to send on to my own school to say, maybe look at this company or that company. And some of them are doing it really, really well.

And so if some companies are able to do it, why can't they all do it? And why can't that standard be applied to schools across the board? You know, because as Trida mentioned, you know, the government gives the funding, but it's the school that puts the tender out and then any company can apply. But it's putting the pressure really on the schools and you're kind of hoping that the companies will be transparent in what they're providing. And I do think there's simple enough things. I

I'm sure some people listening, if they've ever been to other European countries, you know, they have this kind of A, B, C, D, E grading on the front of food packaging that basically tells you, you know, A being great, E being not so good. I think it probably needs to be simplified for parents as well when they're looking at the meals maybe that they're picking for their kids. And I get the 75, 75 is a kind of a jarring number, but I'm just unconscious of things like

You know, you pick up a litre of milk and milk contains mostly milk, but it's not only milk. There's like magnesium phosphate and carrageenan and vitamin D3 and zinc sulfate and things like this is added to your milk. I mean, if, you know, if we were to go on a kind of an additive binge, there'd be nothing left in the larder.

Yeah, look, it's like anything. You don't want to go to the extreme, but that's why, same as yourself here, Anantreida, I'm not a nutritionist either, but that's why it's frustrating when you have experts that are already employed by the government and indeed other countries that have been doing this for years and have loads of research on what's worked, what's not.

that there can't be a simple set of standards and rules that are applied to these companies that they have to adhere to. You know, it's public funding. It's going to be hundreds of millions of euro. And I think, like, I understand the argument. It's €3.20 per meal per child. Now,

If I was to apply that though on economies of scale, even for my own family, five of us, that's 16 quid for dinner tonight. Now I could make a pretty healthy, nutritious meal for 16 euro for us tonight, you know, including three children's portion. So I think it's doable.

Yeah. But I feel for the schools. I think it's not fair that the pressure has been on the parents as well, where you're kind of, as you say, you're looking at various articles or whatever's online and you're kind of panicking going, oh God, I thought it was great in my school. I'm missing something here, you know, that you don't want to be. But I guess if we as parents put the pressure on the providers. Yeah. To maybe change in terms of the

Ingredients for the processing or what's included. What's not... Listen, like I say, plurality of use in the text line. My daughter's a primary school teacher. Says the amount of waste is unbelievable. Children with celiac disease. Says somebody else not catered for. I love the free lunches. Says D in Skibreen, County Cork. Oh God, please don't take them away from me personally. Says somebody else, I would want to know the exact ingredients in each meal for my child. I think there should be standardisation across all providers and a complete avoidance of ultra-processed food and ingredients. It's the main reason I would not sign up my children.

says another listener 087 1400 106 keep your views coming on that your experience of the free school meals are they any good 087 1400 106 Wendy Grace broadcaster Trina Golden principal in Oanabhwe Educate Together National School in Carygilline County Cork thank you both very much The Hard Shoulder with Ciarán Cuddehy with the MG hybrid and electric range weekdays from 4 on Newstalk

At Comcast, our commitment to the military community goes back to our founder, U.S. Navy veteran Ralph Roberts.

Today, we honor his legacy by partnering with organizations to help veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses succeed in today's digital world. Delivering the internet connection, skills, and support they need to advance economic mobility and open doors to new opportunities. Visit ComcastCorporation.com slash military to learn more. Comcast, proudly supporting our military community because your service matters.