Lasagne - in this case an upmarket version at Ponsonby's Farina restaurant - has proved kids' favourite meal in the free school lunch scheme. Photo / Michael Craig
Lasagne - in this case an upmarket version at Ponsonby's Farina restaurant - has proved kids' favourite meal in the free school lunch scheme. Photo / Michael Craig
Lasagne has proved to be the favourite food of children receiving free school lunches so far - but they will have to wait until the winter months to get it next year.
Sabrina Matai'a, who manages the school lunch programme for Libelle Group which fed 13 of the first 31schools in a trial that started in February, said the company started providing just cold food such as sandwiches, but the children asked for hot food.
"Lasagne has been hands-down the most popular dish in both primary and high schools," she said.
"If we were to rank the most popular items, we know lasagne is the most popular, then going down to some pasta dishes. That is telling us that hot food is really favoured in schools.
"But fish does not work, and that's including tuna. And also cherry tomatoes are not very popular - they tend to get thrown around and it's a real waste of food."
Eight contractors are now finalising their menus after winning group contracts to feed 78,000 children as part of a rollout of the Government's free school lunch scheme from the start of next year.
All said they would provide only cold lunches such as sandwiches and wraps in the first term, but most said they would introduce hot foods in the winter terms.
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The scheme started with 7000 students at 31 Bay of Plenty and Hawke's Bay schools in February, expanded to feed 39,000 students in 182 schools by the time this school year ended last week, and is due to feed 200,000 students in 829 schools in the coming year.
Jacinda Ardern shared a child's free school lunch at the Flaxmere Primary School in Hawke's Bay in February. Photo / Paul Taylor.
Suppliers have to follow nutrition guidelines which classify all food types as green, amber or red and require that at least 75 per cent of the ingredients in the main part of a meal must be rated green.
"Green" items include fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, lean meat, low-fat dairy products and wholegrain bread, wraps, pasta or rice.
Lasagne is rated as an "amber" item for which the advice is: "Must not be served daily (consider no more than twice a week)."
Lasagne - in this case an upmarket version at Ponsonby's Farina restaurant - has proved kids' favourite meal in the free school lunch scheme. Photo / Michael Craig
"Red" items include energy bars, sweet bakery items with icing or confectionery, sweetened milk drinks, more than 40g of cheese or more than 150g of yoghurt. They can only be provided on rare occasions.
But reports on the trial of the scheme, obtained under the Official Information Act, reveal that students initially refused to eat a lot of the healthy food they were offered.
An undated progress report labelled as the third in a series gave an example of 20 children in one Year 3 class where only 11 children ate the lunches they were given, "with some leftovers".
Seven of the 20 children refused to take the lunches at all, and two others' lunches were "tasted but not eaten".
Across all the trial schools at that stage, only 74 per cent of the lunches provided by external providers such as Libelle Group were eaten.
The success rate was higher in schools that prepared their own lunches, where 92 per cent of the lunches were eaten.
The same report also shows that some students in eight out of nine classes that were sampled still felt hungry after lunch. The report does not say whether they included children who refused to eat what was provided.
However, all the providers set up feedback systems and Matai'a said they adjusted their menus until most of the lunches were eaten.
"We don't have any food that comes back. It's amazing, everyone eats everything that is in their lunchboxes," she said.
"We are trying to introduce children to tastes that they have never been exposed to, particularly fresh fruit and raw vegetables.
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"We're talking capsicums - things that they might never necessarily be exposed to. They try them."
Hinei Taute, principal of Whakarewarewa School which has been fed by Libelle all this year, said lunches included wraps, sandwiches, raw food such as celery sticks and carrot sticks, salads, soups, cheese and crackers and hot food such as teriyaki chicken and rice.
"Most of them eat it. There's the odd few that don't, or pick at it," she said.
Whakarewarewa School student Tauroa Taute-Collier, aged 9, showed off his lunch provided by Libelle Group. Photo / Supplied.
"One of our staff has pigs so we give the left-overs to her, and she'd be lucky to get half a bucket - and we have 150 kids. Most of it would be the crust of the sandwiches or the end of something."
Taute said the free lunches had given parents "peace of mind" in a difficult year, and helped to lift regular attendance from 88.5 per cent last year to 91 per cent.
