FREEZERMEALS

In 1949, the usage of the School Meals Service by children in Britain was 52%. It is now 70% or 1,000 million meals per year. This growth in numbers must be set against the present facilities, which are already stretched to the limit in many areas. Restrictions have had to be imposed, so that not every child who wishes to have a school meal can do so. Central kitchens, which send out hot meals in bulk to the schools, are coming to the end of their useful lives. But in Leeds central kitchens still provide nearly half the daily quota of meals which are transported in insulated containers to schools without their own kitchens. These are eaten, because of the location of the older schools, by infants from the poorer residential districts of the city, for whom the school meal is particularly important. The transport of hot cooked foods results in reduced palatabiliy and reduced vitamin retention (Table 1). The meal is ready for despatch from the central kitchens between 10.30 a.m. and 11 a.m., so the cooking equipment is almost unused for the rest of the day. Fig. 1 shows the results of a study of major equipment utilisation in a central kitchen. The highest utilisation of equipment is during the morning and reaches a peak about 10 a.m., after which utilisation rapidly falls and during the afternoon major equipment is used very little. Table 2 shows the percentage of the working week when various items of equipment were in use. It can be seen that usage is very low, particularly simultaneous usage of all pieces of one type of equipment.