Who remembers these this school meal

• Turkey Twizzlers
• Pink angel delight with chocolate sprinkles

When I moved to high school the cafeteria was unfamiliar food with a lot of choices and long lines, so I mostly moved to packed lunches:

• Sunny raisins
• Frubes

Definitely!! And the minty custard too   

Glad I’m not having cottage pie for tea.   

I mainly enjoyed school dinners at my first primary school.  When I was about nine years old, I moved to a primary school in a another part of the the UK. School dinners were not so good but dining experience was unpleasant, with loud noise from pupils, dinner lady shouting at pupils and threatening to send them to the headmaster, people mixing mince and mashed potato to give horrible looking grey sludge etc.

I have fond memories of both pink and yellow custard with cake. I really enjoyed school food and it was free.

Our school announced in a letter to parents reassuring them about the quality of their onsite catering that the mashed potato was "made with at least 50% real potatoes"

We were sure our lumpy mash was actually instant mash, it was so gluey. Like wise school stews seemed to be soya chunks with lumps of gristle.

I used to love gypsy tart, I think we all did, even though you could practically feel your teeth disolving as you ate it.

We didn't get a choice and the limited different meals cycled round so you get a lot of the same things. Mash in an icecream scoop, lovely lumpy gravy, crumbly liver etc. We also had lunch-monitors who'd send you back to the dining room if you hadn't eaten enough.

There was no choice when I was at school, you ate what was put in front of you or went hungry, if you were lucky, at primary school we had to eat everything.

I've literally just realised that the fact our infant/junior school only had about a dozen different meal options, and you only had to see which it was to know exactly what it was going to be like, was tremendously comforting. There wasn't any choice and you knew exactly what each thing was like.

The unpredictability of the secondary school canteen meant I couldn't eat there and took in sandwiches or went to the chippy instead.

Oh, yes!  That gritty, pink, milky, Blancmange stuff (shudders).

I don’t think I ever ate a whole school dinner, it was all vile, I remember that one day everyone was given a pineapple ring as a special treat, I couldn’t eat it, I was forced to, I was retching all the time I was eating it. Afterwards I was given a metal beaker of metallic tasting water to wash it down. This was an infant school in the 70’s.

I love liver and onions, especially with bacon, gravy and mash, but I very much doubt I could manage the school dinner version. I have no confidence in them to do a decent job of it. As for the rest....agreed! Yuk!

Liver and onions followed by Blancmange or tapioca pudding, just vile.

There were some nice school meals ...however, there were some utter horror show dishes too ...Ox tongue anyone?  Me neither!  (Forced me to eat it anyway).

Yep same here, Birds custard was king :) No Fresh custard from the supermaket then.

I remember not being keen on the heavy puddings and tart with jam and custard. My favourite was a slice of chocolate Krispie cake.

Oh wow, yeh this brings back some awful food memories. I'm 49 and I still can't touch rice pudding. It smells like sick to me and I refuse to try it again. School custard was also disgusting for some reason, but luckily my mother had Birds custard so I knew what it was supposed to taste like. Phew!!

I think I was kind of ok with other things, although I was always really picky with vegetables until I became an older teen. The one thing I did constantly was accidentally flip the plastic plates by pressing too hard on the edge of the plate, spilling my dinner all over me. I'm sure I did this at least 3-4 times during junior school 1980-1987.

I will eat most things these days, but one of my comfort meals is still sausage, chips and beans. That was a school dinner thing but it was extremely rare.

I do agency work around primary schools and I would love to have a school dinner see if they have changed sadly it’s children only staff are not allowed the food as there lack of it. Maybe one day I’ll find a primary school that allows staff to eat them. 

I used to hate school dinners, the whole experience was a nightmare for me. There was very little that I could eat and a lot of the time I would have to go through the whole process to reject everything and then get a right ear bashing off the dinner ladies. I was the first in my school to bring in a packed lunch much to the dinner ladies annoyance!