When I was a kid, school dinners were school dinners. They consisted of meat pie (what sort of meat exactly was never really discussed), potatoes and vegetables that had been cooked with reference to a calendar rather than a kitchen timer. You ate what was in front of you, and if you were lucky there was some weird psychedelic dessert like blancmange, sponge pudding with pink custard or (and I admit this may have been a speciality of my school) ginger sponge with a lime sauce that looked disconcertingly like the stuff you use to make bubbles when you do the dishes.

Nowadays, things are different. In the UK, nutritional standards for school dinners were done away with in the 1980s – and you can guess the result. Add the fact that costs have been cut so far that the average spend per child is about €0.50 per day, and it’s perhaps no wonder that British kids aren’t just being fed food that doesn’t do them any good; they’re being fed food that will shorten their lives.

Take Bernard Matthew’s infamous “Turkey Twizzlers”, which are sort of extruded slaughterhouse sweepings covered in a bread-like substance, deep fried and fed to the nation’s future. They’re 21% fat, which is quite an achievement when you consider that Turkey is by nature quite a lean meat.

Tell me that’s a good food and I’ll tell you you’re wrong. They’re such awful things that even the Scots (who famously have the worst diets in Europe) have banned them from their schools. The English, of course, are dragging their feet.

Incidentally, the army spends four times that amount each day to feed its dogs.

Nutritional standards were reintroduced in 2001. But in a typically new-Labour weasel fashion, it was only incumbent upon schools to make healthy food available. There was nothing about making sure the kids actually ate it (despite schools being in loco parentis and so responsible for their children’s welfare), and there was no requirement even for a system to monitor what kids actually were eating. Genius.

So what happens is that the middle class parents make packed lunches for their kids, getting ripped off in the process and having lots and lots of marketing pushed their way for high-fat, high-sugar products like Dairylea Dunkers (fatty cheese spread with salty breadsticks) and the dreadful Sunny Delight. But at least they get a choice. The poor kids are forced to take the school meals, and because the tastes you develop at an early age stay with you for life – they’re stuck with a palate that never develops beyond processed food (ask yourself why young people seem to prefer crap like Budweiser and alcopops over more sophisticated drinks).

I’m quite interested in all this at the moment because Isobel is off to the ecole maternelle in September and will be having her lunch at school. We went down to the school the other day, and noticed the menu for that week was posted next to the front door.

Here’s what we learned. French kids sit down to a four-course meal every single day. It’s nutritionally balanced, and it sounds very tasty indeed. If your French is up to it, you can see what’s on offer here. Just choose one of the schools from the drop-down menu.

I also found out, by talking to my colleagues, that kids have food appreciation languages in the infant school, and that the teachers at least have wine with their meals at the lycées.

Obviously school dinners are school dinners – and I’m sure the stuff will taste a lot less good than it sounds. That’s after all the nature of mass catering. But doesn’t that sound a little more agreeable than Turkey Twizzlers and Sunny bloody Delight?