Exhibition offers a taste of classic school dinners

A museum is offering visitors the opportunity to sample semolina, pink custard - and even turkey twizzlers - in a throwback showcase of school dinners through the ages.

The Food Museum in Stowmarket, Suffolk, has launched a two-year School Dinners exhibition that charts the history of the childhood staple.

Chloe Brett, of the museum's visitor services, said it had been "one of our most requested topics for an exhibition".

"I think it's something that we all understand, you go through school, have either school dinners or your packed lunches, and those memories are really strong and they follow us into adulthood," she said.

The Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson also told BBC Breakfast she remembered her primary school dinners as "absolutely awful".

"My abiding memory of school dinners is sadly custard with the thick skin on and orange fish fingers," she said.

In September, organisers urged people to donate objects such as lunchboxes, staff uniforms and menus to help bring the stories of school dinners to life.

Visitors will be able to learn about school dinners from the 1940s to the present day, reflecting tastes and trends, and staff will rotate what samples are on offer.

Museum curator Katherine Bridges explained that school meals had "changed massively over time".

"Starting with the 1940s with menus from Norfolk, they will be able to learn about the history of the school meals policy and poverty behind it, through to the young voices involved in school food today and the dinner staff who make school food possible," she said.

"I hope visitors will come and really have fun with a sense of nostalgia.

"There is a really serious side to this topic as well, so I hope visitors will learn something."

The new exhibition was created as a result of visitor feedback and has been shaped through the stories of local school dinner staff.

A 2005 campaign to improve school dinners by the chef Jamie Oliver, called Feed Me Better, led to the establishment of the School Food Trust - now the Children's Food Trust.

It sought to overhaul the provision of healthy school meals, and junk food - including turkey twizzlers - were largely banned from canteen menus.

Museum director, Jenny Cousins, said school dinners were a "cross-generational experience".

"It's a serious topic because really the history of school dinners is the history of why we feed children at school," she said.

"It's the history of what kind of society we want to create, how you value food as a child is what you take through to adulthood, it makes a difference to your health, it makes a difference to the state that we have."

Ms Cousins said the museum had worked with many different organisations as well as nutrition specialists.

It had even borrowed items from Eton College, which Ms Cousins said had been feeding its pupils far longer than many other schools.

The exhibition will remain at the museum until February 2027.

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