by Seymour states that not all students needed their lunches given to them by the government.
“Why should kids whose parents can afford to provide lunch and have gone to the trouble of making it have to sit and wait while other kids eat in front of them?”
The Ministry also suggests that schools should choose a time for lunch that will give staff and students the most opportunity to benefit and claimed healthy food tastes better if you are hungry.
Seymour asks if this means teachers are supposed to get students to the point they were starving so they would want to eat the provided lunches.
The advice also suggests schools should encourage students to try new foods and then praise them for doing so.
“It can take between five and 15 exposures of trying something new to learn to like a food,” the Ministry claims.
Seymour says “children aren’t stupid” and claims “they either like something or they don’t”.
“If these lunches are so terrible that kids have to try them 15 times, there’s probably a problem with what’s in them.”
Seymour claims “some real work” is needed to see how many lunches are going to waste and find the reason why.
On March 13, it was revealed a provider of free school lunches had to apologise to a Northland primary school for serving up cold meals two hours late.
