The Government has unveiled its overhauled school lunches programme - cutting about $107 million from the scheme.
But the changes will mean more Kiwi children will get free meals - because some of the savings will go to providing food for 10,000 children aged between 2 and 5 at low-equity, not-for-profit, community-based early learning services.
All 235,000 students at low and middle-income schools currently receiving free lunches under the Ka Ora, Ka Ako scheme will continue to receive them.
However, for intermediate and high schoolers there'll be an option to opt out if parents want to pack their own lunches.
What's on offer is also changing. Associate Education Minister David Seymour said it's out with the couscous, hummus and quinoa - and in with the sandwiches and fruit.
"If you look at what big catering companies are able to do - I was sceptical myself - but they actually manage to provide very nutritious food at low prices."
The Associate Education Minister said the secret source to cheaper lunches is the Government's massive bulk purchasing power.
"I don't know if you've ever bought 200,000 lunches but they tell me if you do, it's less than if you buy maybe a couple of hundred for your local school," Seymour said.
Currently, each lunch costs about $8 - but the new model has budgeted $3 a meal.
"As someone who makes kids' lunchboxes every day, I wouldn't be able to fill my kids' lunchboxes with good quality healthy food for $3 a day," Labour leader Chris Hipkins said.
Chief executive and co-founder of KidsCan Charitable Trust Julie Chapman said on average, the charity can provide a good meal for $2 and a range of breakfast, lunch and snack items for schools. KidsCan shared its operating model with the Government.
Of the more than $100 million in savings, $4 million will go to extending free kai to 10,000 in-need preschoolers.
And for the big kids, what they'll get each day, according to a social media post by Seymour's ACT Party, will be fruit and sandwiches - not "woke" food like quinoa and sushi.
"If you don't get that sushi's woke, I don't know how to wake you up," Seymour said.
ACT wasn't to be outdone on questionable social media posts.
Labour MP Duncan Webb posted: "Do you think [David Seymour] doesn't like humus because it's too close to h@m@s [sic]."
"It's an offensive tweet," National Party deputy leader Nicola Willis said.
Hipkins said the post was deleted "within a matter of minutes".
"I think he'd probably reflected on it, realised he'd made a mistake. It is a mistake he shouldn't have done it."
Moving back to the meat of the school lunch issue, it's still not as cheap as chips.
"We're spending $478 million on the healthy school lunch programme with an addition over the next two years," Seymour said.
Then the funding runs out, doing exactly what the Government's been attacking its predecessors for. Hipkins described that as "absolute hypocrisy".
"A fiscal cliff is when you say you're going to do something but don't... fund it," Seymour said. "We're being very clear - we're funding this for two years while we consider if there's a better way to do it."
Then it'll be decided whether school lunches fall off a fiscal cliff.
