Remember your school dinners? Are they horrible memories of liver, cabbage and semolina, which you were made to finish before leaving the table? Or perhaps you hold dear your childhood diet of soggy fish fingers with baked beans.

These days schoolchildren in the UK would rather tuck into burgers and chips, and that is what they are given.

It is estimated that a quarter of UK children rely on school dinners as their main meal for the day.

So now the government is proposing healthier standards for food in schools by setting compulsory nutritional standards.

The UK Schools Minister Charles Clarke says he will not get rid of chips, but wants to present children with a choice of tasty and healthy alternatives.

But will children go for the healthier option? If your child had to choose between pizza with chips and a fresh crunchy salad, what do you think they would go for?

Celebrity cook Prue Leith thinks that healthy food will have to be made more attractive to young people. 'Carrot spears' and 'potato cannonballs' are ideas to give vegetables a livelier image.

Headteacher Peter Woods backs the proposals for educating children about healthy eating but recognises that giving them a choice will not necessarily work.

"At the end of the day we can't make children buy things they don't want to buy," he said.

Public Health Minister, Tessa Jowell, thinks it is important that children learn to live as adults.

"Show me the healthy eating child and I'll show you the healthy eating adult," she said.

Should children simply be presented with healthier choices in the school canteen? Some parents say pupils should not be served unhealthy food at all.

What do you think?

School dinners: Should kids have the choice?

Your reaction in full

Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage | ©