Is chocolate unfairly demonised as unhealthy?

My kids school don't impose any restrictions other than allergy related and fizzy drinks. My girls take a healthy lunch in the main, so for them if they want a chocolate biscuit or sugary item alongside that then does it really matter? After Christmas I've let them take in an item from their selection box every day (we don't do binge eating of the whole box) and nothing has been said. On the flip side, my girls do tell me that some kids take doughnuts, plus chocolate, plus crips, plus jam sandwiches and nothing is said about that either! It's so hard to impose a rule that works for everyone. Schools either have to restrict choices for people who are largely sensible/educated anyway or fail to assist families who struggle to manage nutrition and healthy eating for a variety of reasons.

Demonising any food is stupid, it teaches nothing and encourages poor relationships with food.

The whole thing pisses me of my kids are like little sticks a strong gust of wind and they'd end up in kansas. I don't understand why they have to have there food restricted because of a few fat kids and shitty parents who don't know how to feed there kids. I take chocolate to work with me as a treat for break why can't kids. I always had chocolate in my lunch box as a kid and it didn't do me any harm. Instead of sending letters out to the parents who send there kids with a single chocolate cornflake cake. Just send letters to the parents who send there kids to school with a family size bar of dairy milk

Try the Rude Health range. A bit cardboardy till you get used to them, but we would eat nothing else now. You can taste the naturally nutty flavour of the spelt.

And the Rice puffs are nice too - just puffed brown rice, none of this reshaped slush with additives.

Our primary had this nonsense.
We once had a week of emails to ‘educate’ parents on heathly eating finished off with Fish & Chip Friday and the PTA selling ice creams in the playground after school! 🙄

... just having a second wodge of my Christmas bar ....

Actually you raise an interesting point. If a mainstream supermarket brand, chances are they were in fact worse than the chocolate.

Rude Health is an excellent brand however. Some of their spelt flakes in dark choc would be 👌

Chocolate itself isn't inherently unhealthy. But that's only if consumed in moderation. Trouble is that too many people have no self control and eat far too much of it. A small bar of chocolate occasionally or a few strips from a large bar isn't a problem. But, when someone buys 2 or 3 small bars and eats them in one day, or an entire medium/large bar in a day, then it clearly is a massive unhealthy problem. Everything in moderation!

I am currently eating a piece of Dairy Milk - inspired by this thread. I was given it for Christmas!

I'm not saying it is a top source of veg, but popcorn actually counts as one of five a day!

Cornflakes are not healthy. High in refined carbs, blood sugar will spike and crash.

They serve loads of sugar and UPFs in our school for hot dinners. Cake with icing, huge slabs of shortbread, potato waffles, fish fingers, oven chips, crisps as a side option on the salad bar etc.

I don't give a flying fuck about this new moral panic around kids eating treats. My kid has severe food phobias due to autism and I live by the motto that "fed is best".

NHS states children under 5 should eat more fat than adult should. Chocolate is about 55% coco fat.
so, how old were the kids?

So would I.

Some kids don’t or won’t eat breakfast or have very minimal breakfast so start to lose concentration.

This is where we need to sing the song from Wonka: "Weeeeellll ... there's chocolate... AND there's chocolate ...."

Good quality dark chocolate is a good source of lots of things - anti-oxidants, magnesium, even iron.

Sugary bars that you tend to find at the corner shop or 9 to 9 are essentially candy.

I think your snacks were probably fine health-wise but can understand the school don't want them bringing in aero bars and having a philosophical debate about the point at which a chocolate item becomes unhealthy. Just dark? Or a small amount of milk choc? Good quality milk choc?

So while there's chocolate and there's chocolate, I guess the other side is if it's chocolate, well, it's chocolate.

I sent my DS in with a bag of propercorn popcorn once and he was told it wasn’t suitable. Also sent him in with a homemade gingerbread man at Christmas as a treat and again, he was told no.

He takes a piece of fruit, Babybel/cheesestring or bear yo-yo in.

The school aren't saying chocolate is 'evil' though, are they?

They're just saying it's unhealthy.

Having said that, I don't know why they keep encouraging snacking anyway.

Most kids can wait the few hours from breakfast till lunch without having to eat inbetween.

The no chocolate rule is there because otherwise kids would be bringing in bars of aero or dairy milk as their snack

it’s much easier to blanket ban chocolate, and then you avoid this issue- “miss but they’ve got a chocolate cake!!!”

Probably they just haven’t noticed the flapjack/banana bread, but you could always ask for the definition of ’healthy’ they are following