As inflation hits food prices, are school dinners going to shrink?

Food prices have escalated to the point that school dinner suppliers are having to consider options like smaller meals. As the cost of living crisis continues to bite and more and more families struggle to make ends meet; as food prices continue to soar with no end in sight just yet, Schools are once again facing budget cuts and this time it’ll be in the form of school dinners. Incredibly, due to more families becoming entitled to them and the fact they’re getting more expensive to produce due to food prices, the suppliers are being forced to consider either shrinking the portion sizes or use cheaper, less nutritious alternatives to keep costs down. Inflation of food prices has seen the price of wheat, used in all manner of baked goods rise 30%, even basics like cooking oil has doubled in price over the last year. The only other alternative is that the suppliers start charging schools even more to supply them, eating into their already stretched budgets and may in fact simply not prove possible if the government don’t increase funding to cope. Perhaps the government will just scrap them? They tried this not long ago, Theresa May was called the meals snatcher for considering the plan, but for many kids the only hot meal they get each day is that one. Teachers have been reporting for years how kids are coming into school hungry. Many have been helping out of their own pockets, keeping fruit or whatever in the classroom so that there’s something for everyone. Now you might consider this a bit of a safeguarding issue, but when the Safeguarding minister is Rachel Maclean and her answer to everything is get another job or get a better paid one, you don’t exactly have much faith in her having a handle on this. The schools minister is Nadhim Zahawi, often the go-to bullshi**er for the Tories of a Sunday morning has for some time held the opinion parents prefer to pay for school meals and if they want healthier options they’ll have to pay extra for that. All that does is reduce take up, reduces choice and isn’t levelling up anything, but walking away from any duty of responsibility to our kids. Remember how insane they were over children being kept home over the pandemic for fear of impacts on education? It’s not half as big an impact as hunger is! This needs fixing, kids have suffered enough abuse at the hands of the Tories now.