Healthy Meals: School Dinners

School dinners (that means ‘lunch’) are a hot topic + hot topic: tema scottante, attuale in the UK these days and there are lots of different opinions about what young people eat at lunchtime. Some people think that school meals + meals: pasti  are unhealthy, some people say that they are much better than in the past and others say that midday + midday: mezzogiorno meals should be free for all schoolchildren.

What is a school dinner?

More than a third of British school pupils have school dinner. Others take a packed lunch + packed lunch: pranzo al sacco, schiscetta  to school, prepared at home, or have lunch at home, or even eat at nearby + nearby: nelle vicinanze take-away restaurants. A typical school dinner costs about two pounds a day for a secondary pupil in the UK. There is usually a main course + main course: piatto principale , a dessert and a drink. Parents often + often: spesso pay in advance online. School dinners must include food groups such as fruit and vegetables, protein (for example, meat + meat: carne , fish or cheese) and carbohydrates (for example, rice + rice: riso or pasta). There are rules + rules: norme  about how the food is prepared: for instance, there are limits on the quantity of fried food served.

Neverseconds

Martha Payne, from Scotland, started a blog called ‘Neverseconds + seconds: bis ’ about her school dinners when she was just nine years old. She posted photographs of her lunch every day and gave the food a grade + grade: voto out of ten + out of ten: da zero 
a dieci . The grade depended on the quality and quantity of the food and how healthy it was. She didn’t always give good grades. Her complaints + complaints: lamentele included too much fried food, small quantities and hair in the food (yuck! + yuck!: che schifo! ). Many people read her blog and young people from all over the world posted pictures of their school meals on ‘Neverseconds’.

Celebrity input

Jamie Oliver, the celebrity British chef, is passionate about school dinners. He thinks that they need to be healthier and tastier + tastier: più saporito . Jamie helped to promote Martha’s blog and ‘Neverseconds’ became very popular on social media websites. Martha also raised money + to raise money: raccogliere fondi for charity + charity: beneficenza and used it to provide food for more than 600,000 poor children around the world.