Opinions on schools dictating what kids can eat at snack...

[sendwineandastraw]

I’ve just made up my Y6 DD’s pack lunch and she mentioned that she was told off yesterday for bringing in and eating a Beetroot and Berry Soreen bar at break time, apparently she should be making better and healthier snack choices!

Dont get me wrong I’m under no illusions that’s it’s not exactly the same nutritional value as carrot sticks or an apple but a quick google tells me a Soreen lunch bar contains 32% less sugar than an average snack bar and 50% than the average cake bar...

Yesterday DD took with her water, yogurt, blueberries, sushi (Aldi’s finest lunch pack!!) and the above Soreen so She’s hardly living a life of Smartie sandwich’s and Irn Bru!!!...

I don’t like being dictated to at the best of time what’s right for my kids but DD’s school is very sporty and before break have already done their daily mile and swam for an hour, how is a satsuma going to sustain and keep kids focused until lunch?!

Don't you see the irony in how as a society the more obsessed we've got with healthy eating, the fatter we've all become.

I think the blame lies more with ultra processed food (like Soreen) being heavily marketed as healthy (low fat, contains real fruit, no added sugar - but full of sweeteners etc), not with campaigns for healthy eating.

That’s not the causal relationship at work here

discussing healthy eating doesn’t cause people to have weight issues

the over availability of nutrient low/ energy dense food and the increasingly sedentary lives people lead do

despite the ‘no food is bad’ rhetoric that only means something if you eat a tiny portions

I don’t know if you have ever looked at the graphs showing the trends towards increasingly unhealthy eating but it’s disgusting. The lancet report made me cry in despair at the sheer amount of red meat eaten in the U.K.! (Not a veggie or vegan btw)

how far disassociated we have become from what a healthy diet would look like is a gap hundreds of scientists are trying to work out how to bridge while cardio vascular issues caused by overly fatty food and not enough exercise continue to rise in younger and younger age groups

the health statistics are inarguable

we are lining our children up for short lives plagued by chronic illness

every attempt to slow this trend is met with the resistance you see here or on any thread about weighing children at school.

people would rather fight the school than accept they might need to address any kind of issue at home

This!

I used to mind a child whose parent would send yesterdays cold fish and chips for her 1.5yos lunch

I know from teachers that they are forever dealing with whole packets of biscuits, left over take away etc

honestly I think the solution of universal free school lunches and massive investment in making sure those aren’t being provided my companies trying to make a profit but by experts in nutrition!

I’m not really sure why a parent should let the school teach something they know is wrong.
The whole point if the lunch police isn’t just to try and ensure that children are eating as heathy as possible. It’s also about teaching what is and isn’t a good choice.

Of a parent has a particular knowledge in that area, why not listening to them instead?

I think my kids are allowed fruit as a snack. Sometimes my eldest takes some fruit and my youngest takes a satsuma for a day trip to school but mine usually wait until lunch.

Meh. It happened to my kid when he was in primary. He was eating breakfast bar at snack time which was meant for lunch box, and taken away. Only fruit was allowed at snack time. He could have it for lunch, so no biggie.

Speaking of education, I think you mean 'definitely'. 'Defiantly' means to do something with defiance, just so you know.

🤦🏼‍♀️

do you never challenge something which you know to be utter bollocks? Seeing as you assumed the opposite the matter was handled politely. I don’t have a teaching degree so I don’t take on educating children.

The teacher doesn’t have a nutrition related degree, so shouldn’t be taking on the job of policing school snacks and lunchboxes sent from home

Correcting peoples typos just makes you looks like a knob… just so you know 😊

That’s such a stupid hill for the school to die on during a cost of living crisis. I honestly wonder why some people become teachers, we’ve enough to do without this petty shit.

Yes it did, my advice was taken on board-because it was done in a constructive manner.
I’m in Scotland, and this was about 18 years ago though.
It’s probably changed now though thanks to politics 🙄-I don’t know that schools have the same autonomy now as then

My senior school used to sell us biscuits and sticky buns at break time!

Exactly this. Parents don’t know what’s good and bad for their kids any more because the marketing is so skewed.

On another thread people thought Cheerios were healthy because they contain whole grains.

We will never win the obesity battle until they sort out the advertising.

Is the issue definitely about healthy options rather than being an issue of following the school rules? My dc's school has a "fruit or veg for breaktime snack" rule, which is quite common I think.

My sporty dc have survived perfectly well with a piece of fruit as a snack each day, so I'm not convinced that any dc really needs a snack bar rather than this. If your dd is getting hungry then give her a bigger breakfast - porridge will generally keep my dc going until lunch.

And until people are willing to look at the health statistics instead of trying to convince themselves not to listen to those who have because they typed defiantly not definitely on a social media app then the problem will continue to compound

people would rather try and discredit people who know more than them than learn from them.

im setting myself up for a lifetime of frustration by getting into public health communication and I know it but I also know that so many of my peers are already facing lifetimes of chronic illnesses because of the poor diet their parents convinced themselves was ok that they now feed their children

there is so much information available but people default to what they’ve always known and reverse engineer justifications like ‘we did it x way and we are ok’ (health demographics say otherwise!)

The level of change requires in U.K.s diet is overwhelming, it took me a full week to get my head around how far off track we have come compared to what a healthy diet would look like.

I am still working on the changes required in my own diet while pursuing more in depth understanding. It’s not easy to go from oven food and easy meals to a 90% plant based diet but until we drop our red meat and sugar addiction we are dooming ourselves and our children to chronic illness and cardiac issues

Slightly off topic but what always shocks me is petrol stations and the like. In my local one there’s a 5 metre row just full of chocolate, sweets and crisps. Another 2 metre row for biscuits. A bakery section full of dodgy looking sausage rolls and those Ginster pies, plus several fridges full of high energy drinks. Literally just rows and rows and rows of high process/fat/sugar ‘foods’, and this is the norm in a lot of shops now.

Back in the day my local paper shop had a 1p and 2p mix tray and we’d get 10p or 20p each as a treat!

I live in Denmark where it is extremely rare to have a parent staying at home. Both parents work full time in most cases. Junk food and sugar is banned in both kindergartens and schools. No-one brings processed stuff in their boxes. At the same time no-one prepares extra special homemade snacks for their kids. It's simple stuff: bread, butter, cheese, fruit and vegetables. Everyone seems to manage.

Although, yes I agree the schools should be following through with a healthy lunch and it is unfortunate that they are not. But what does that mean then? Give them crap for snacks because they're already eating crap for lunch?!

@SomePosters

I understand that, my kids are a healthy weight, active and we all eat a healthy diet. They take packed lunches because I consider it substantially healthier than the slop the school serve.
I've no issue at all with kids being weighed in schools and the results sent home, I think teaching them about looking after your body with good foods is important, as is reaching them how to budget, choose and cook that food.

But policing lunch boxes rarely causes anxiety to the people in charge of packing them. Usually it's the child who ends up feeling guilty or anxious about if they've made 'good choices' or not.

We've had school friends over who couldn't recognise what broccoli was, they'd never seen or tried it, they took utter shit in their lunchbox, but commenting on it wouldn't have helped them have a healthy diet, it would have just shamed an 8 year old who had no control over the situation.

If only it was as cheap and easy to buy fresh produce as it is to buy chicken nuggets and chips. That's where thr main problem is

schools are following healthy diet guidelines set the government I assume.

but it's totally wrong. I'd understand if kdis were coming in with crisps for snack (mine eat crisps btw, just not at school!) or chocolate.

what gets me is that in school dinners a pudding is given me but when a kid takes a pack lunch with a sweet treat in, it's wrong. It makes no sense.

far worse things than a soreen bar!

Is your dd overweight? If not, I would send an email to the form teacher asking that they kindly refrain from criticising her/your food choices, that she is healthy and does not need that sort of food-shaming.
If she ever becomes overweight, they are to take it up with you, not your dd.

Fully agree @RegardingMary .

Why having a go at the child that has no control over what goes in their lunchbox?

I know the idea is that the child will put pressure on the parent, and seeing the number of threads in that subject on MN, it’s working. But it still doesn’t mean it will change anything (and it’s the child that will be scold….).

Plus I’ll be honest, having a go at a child because they have a ‘sugary snack’ in their lunchbox when the school is proposing biscuit and cake as a dessert…
it’s more than hypocritical too.

Good for your children, demographically speaking that doesn’t apply to most people though!

Its about so many variables, that is what makes the problem so difficult to tackle.
lunch box policing by people with a sketchy understanding of nutrition is far from THE answer

it’s about access to not only affordable fresh ingredients but also the kitchen facilities to prepare them and involve your kids in doing so, it’s about time and skills to prep from grow your own, cook from scratch, space for a decent freezer and equipment that makes batch cooking easier

Its also about the influences outside of your home, other kids and parents who say things like ‘just water???’ When your kid doesn’t want diluting juice, it’s about tv and advertising, it’s the marketing in shops, availability of crap, it’s the fact we don’t walk to the grocers and the butchers twice a week for fresh but do a big shop once a month/week and need food that keep over the period in between

we are so very far from where we need to be for healthy choices to be the norm and yet any and every attempt to challenge our disordered eating is hailed as the reason for it.

they way people react to the weighing scheme makes me despair. After every time it happens there is thread after thread with people arguing the toss and not even being willing to see a gp for a second opinion.
i was once thrown out of a parenting group for suggesting someone not ignore the schools letter saying their child was dangerously overweight and to seek an opinion from the gp rather than fb!

@SomePosters yes I get you re access to facilities for cooking etc…

I think there is also the issue that in some homes, there are just NO vegetable in sight so no way for the child to get used to eat them etc….

When I was growing up in France, most children were eating at the canteen (no packed lunches). Children were encouraged to eat (some of) everything or at least to try it. They had a starter p, usually a very small salad - think a few cucumber slices, a bit if grated carrots etc.., a main course always with some vegetables and then a dessert - often a fruit, some cheese and very very rarely a cake.
It allowed ALL children to try different foods. They got used to different taste and also at least got ONE balanced meal in the day.

I think this system is much bette at teaching children what food is and what a balanced diet is. Here it’s more likely that the children will end up with some breaded thing (chicken/fish) + fries and a cookie from their school meal. Hardly a balanced meal at all.

Plus the issue is that teachers dint know what healthy eating is anyway.
So they will have accept stuff that are full of sugar because that particular product has the image of being healthy but will refuse a home made slice of cake because it’s cake therefore bad….
No relation between their advice and the reality.

And they carry on advising children that crisps are ok (really?), (sugary) cereals are ok and part of a healthy breakfast etc….

Its not helpful.

I hate this shit. Making kids feel like they have done something wrong for what they eat at lunch is not going to make them healthier, it's just going to give them food related issues. Especially when there's nothing wrong with the food to begin with!