packed lunch police

[AuntiePickleBottom]

my son lunch today, is ham salad brown bread sandwich, yogurt, an apple with a carton of orange juice..he also take a bottle of water to have in the classroom.

due to policy no sweets, choclate and crisps are allowed.

just looked on the menu for school meals and today it is Sausages with
Mashed Potato Green Beans and Gravy with the dessert of Pineapple Up-side
Down Cake with Custard

on aibu to think that ds should be allowed to have a little treat in his packed lunch seeing as the other children has cake and custard

DD's school has Healthy School accreditation, and while I don't know what that actually includes it does NOT include the lunchbox police. Which is a good job, as the school dinner puds this week are, let's see - jam cookie, lemon iced bun, fruit sponge and custard, yogurt with fruit portion, fruit flapjack. I don't actually consider any of that to be crap, just part of a varied diet for young children - but it would certainly make me complain very loudly if she wasn't allowed a flapjack or a bit of cake in her lunchbox.

I did push the boundaries a bit on Tuesday, sent a Fudge in with her lunch, didn't even get that confiscated ... vodka tomorrow I think.

Haribojoe what got me is that my DS is the skinniest kid going, his ribs show. He does so much sport that he needs sugar every now and then but as I have brought him up with fruit and veg he doesn't actually like sugary things. At least I know with DD that she will eat a high sugar jam sandwich.

I won't pay for school dinners as it is mostly fast food that my home cooked food children won't eat

I can't remember which county it was (probs, norfolk, suffolk or cambs) in EA, had the lunchbox checkers as a county wide rule which a load of parents/governers managed to get overturned on the basis that it was a hypocritical load of crap.

I do understand that there are a tiny number of kids being sent in with nothing but rubbish, but that is a way bigger problem individual to those families and it is really not necessary to drag everyone else into it - I also don't see how it helps them. If you send your child in with nothing but mars bars, which are then confiscated, they then just have no lunch. As stratagies go it's very likely to backfire.

Personally, I would take note of the menu and imitate the pudding exactly....every day...if it's ake and custard I would pack cake and custard...if its ice cream I would put some in a small flask....etc...and hen demand to know why you cannot provide the same as th school dinner kids get.

If they say its to do with ingredients...ask or the recipe....and imitate it. They can't stop you actually...this sounds worthy of a strong letter t the head.

My DD can't have alot of acid fruit in a day due to her reflux.
She doesn't want to take an apple every day ( doesn't like pears/ bananas/rasins, can't have plum/peach family or kiwi), so she has a few mixed nuts/grapes/figs & snack a jacks !

School have told her snack a jacks are unhealthy and not to bring them to school again!
But it's okay to bring pepperoni/cheese snack.

The school also has a packed lunch policy. I'm glad my DD has school lunch.

I know some of the children in DDs school will not eat their 'healthy' pack lunch.

I think it is appropriate to refer to Nazism actually, and not necessarily overstating it in the way you think. At the beginning of the Third Reich there were all sorts of apparently petty restrictions on people that had the effect of making the population jumpy, nervous and self-policing about trivial things, priming them to lose their social and moral antennae, and softening them up for what was to come. I think this early softening up has happened in the UK to a certain extent with regard to identity card issues, child protection policy (for example large state databases detailing children's personal and domestic situations), and the undermining of the parental role in favour of perceiving children effectively as 'wards of the state' wherever possible, with the associated intrusion of the state into the domestic domain. Now I don't for a moment think that we are heading towards a totalitarian regime, but I am taken aback at the changes over the last decade or two and what it means for personal liberty if this mission creep continues.

But what does this have to do with confiscating muffins, I hear you ask? Well, it's the heavy-handed way it's done, assuming proper dialogue with parents is unnecessary because the state/school/dinner lady/head teacher is in a better position to decide what is best for the child than its own parents, and that undermines the family. So it's not just about a muffin.

Pepperami as a putative HEALTHY FOOD? Oh my actual god.

Luckily ds1's school has the sensible policy of 'no confectionary' and that's it, everything else is up to parental choice.

YANBU, it's nuts to have such a discrepancy between school dinner and packed lunches !

Yep - this is also a common occurrence in some Primary schools where I live (East Anglia). The dinner ladies watch over those children eating packed lunches and confiscate their crisps / chocolate / cake and put a note in the lunch-box for the child to bring home blathering on about "healthy lunch-box policy, see school website for further details etc etc etc".

I find it a bit blinkered seeker to say you don't believe it happens. You also said that about my DS's old school which banned running in the playground a few years ago.

I'm really sad to tell you it's all true - maybe certain Council's operate under different rules, and the OP, myself and others on this thread are just unfortunate to live in those areas and you live in a more "normal" one without bizarre rules made up by the joy police?

I absolutely see where you're coming from, SeniorWrangler, but this is schools taking it upon themselves to confiscate cakes.

The Government have yet to mandate packed lunch inspections, nor can I see them ever doing so.

My DC school have relented after we had a campaign to put a complaint in with the school about their draconian policies, they are now allowed 1 "treat food" in their lunch boxes, either crisps, or cake or and choc biscuit (kitkat etc).
I still complained however, when I went to the mothers day lunch, and they were serving jam sponge pud with "dayglo" custard or they have "Iced Bun" for pud!

When my DS started school he was really keen to have packed lunch. His school was a Healthy School, so no chocolate, biscuits etc allowed in the lunch box.

He stopped asking about packed lunch when I pointed out that the giant chocolate chip cookies that the dinner ladies baked/chocolate puddding/ice cream (!) were only available to children having hot lunch.

At his school packed lunches sit at separate tables from hot lunches.

It's all quite bizarre.

diablo I live in East Anglia too, and they have that standardised 4 week menu dont they, have you seen the amount of sweet and treat foods they have on it,disgusting, isn't it! My lunchboxes are far more healthy!

My DCs school prides itself on having a very high uptake of school lunches (not sure why this should be considered an achievement, but there you go!). What they don't tell prospective parents is that the children on packed lunches have to eat after everyone else. They can't eat with the rest of their class/their friends.

seeker I can't speak for anyone else, but sadly they did take my DD's chocolate off her! and she was only in her first term in reception at the time. She came home absolutely distraught and when I queried it, it was with a bit of a 'now DD's come home saying this, but it doesn't sound right can I clarify what happened'. But unfortunately, it did happen.

In the primary school my DD goes to, the packed lunch children eat in a separate dining room at those long tables and have their lunch bags/boxes open on the table in front of them. The dinner ladies walk up and down opening tubs and packets, supervising behaviour, resolving squabbles and confiscating chocolate .

I don't know. I firmly believe that a healthy diet is necessary, but also think that there's nothing wrong with a square or two of chocolate! Homemade flapjacks and cakes are not confiscated.

Actually OFSTED can and do inspect packed lunches ...

State biscuit spies LOL!
The Cambridgeshire menus are pretty horrid IME.

FWIW, my DS had packed lunches all through primary school. Except for one half term when he had dinners. The school had adopted the new healthy eating school menu laid out by the government and I was on the governing body at the time and felt it was important to support it.

I had to take him off it after they sent him home from school 4 times with chronic stomach ache and it turns out he was really constipated. The diet was very heavy on white bread - white bread rolls, thick white dough pizzas and not much in the way of veg etc. Now constipation has never been an issue for my 2 (plenty of fibre!!!) and I put him back on packed lunches citing that school dinners were having an adverse effect on his health.

He's now at secondary school and his diet seems to consist almost entirely of paninis and hotdogs :(

senior can they?!!

The reason that packed lunches and hot dinners are 'segregated' is purely for logistics.
School halls double as dinner halls and PE/Drama/Assembly spaces so therefore hot dinners go first so that the kitchen staff (who are only paid till 1.15) can get cleared away, and then dinner ladies can clear up the hall after packed lunches (do your floors at home have as much food on them?) to get ready for the afternoon.

And believe it or not, I am reliably informed that school dinners are nutritionally balanced to be suitable for children.
I assume the carb overload is because children in school are expected to be more active than they are at home!

That's what They want you to believe, Nanny0gg

In reality our school canteens are more like South Africa under apartheid.

Ofsted check compliance with Government food standards during full school inspections.

They don't send small uniformed Borrowers in to examine actual lunchboxes.

I remember this from when I was still in the UK. (6 years ago)
I am still livid that dinner ladies would prance about removing what they considered bad items.

They loved doing it too , that just made me and for the children.