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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

packed lunch police

244 replies

AuntiePickleBottom · 08/09/2011 12:54

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

OP posts:
Fimbo · 09/09/2011 10:07

I used to work as a lunchtime supervisor in a school, some of the lunches are really quite rubbish either at school or from home. I think the best though was a child who opened his lunchbox and it was just full of popcorn, nothing else. It was about the size of a large box from the cinema.

GnomeDePlume · 09/09/2011 10:31

The sad thing is that the policies often have no effect on the children with really terrible packed lunches. The primary schools my DCs attended had a very high proportion of free school meals (about a third of the cohort) but even then didnt get full take up of this entitlement. Some of the children lived chaotic lives so that their care would fall between different semi-detached adults (siblings, GPs, aunts etc) as well as parents. Some of these children werent given a packed lunch instead they would be given a couple of pounds to buy something on the way to school. A nine year old makes a nine year old's nutritional choices. Application of a strict no chocolate, crisps or fizzy drinks would leave these children literally without food that school day.

Thankfully the head (though a total pillock in other ways) recognised this problem and didnt try to push through these policies.

Scholes34 · 09/09/2011 12:03

I can understand and fully accept the ban on chocolate bars in a lunch box, but it's totally ridiculous to ban a piece of chocolate cake, or chocolate chip cookie. My DCs always have a "sweet" in their lunch box. Today it's homemade chocolate and vanilla pinwheel biscuits (just like I used to have at school). The school really has no leg to stand on if they're serving up puddings as part of the school dinners.

DartsRus · 09/09/2011 12:17

Horopu With our LA budgetting system, money may come in to the school in relation to the number of meals taken up, but all of that money goes out again for the dinners contract, so net effect for the school is zero. But, I see what you're saying.

SnakeOnCrack · 09/09/2011 12:27

I always got a penguin in my lunchbox.. or a club.. ahh them were the days.

Sorry, that's not entirely relevant to the thread but still..

alison222 · 09/09/2011 12:41

Our school have a blankey ban on fizzy drinks sweets and chocolate oh and nuts as it is supposed to be a nut free school. The children are only supposed to have crisps once or twice a week.
They do take chocolate and sweets off the children.

They also keep sending home reminders about healthy luches and suggestions for "healthy" lunchboxes.

They sent out questionaires when they were amending their ploicy. I along with several other parents I know filled it in then annotated it all around with things like
"What is a healthy diet for an adult is not necessarily a healthy one for a child as their nutritional requirements are different", " When you ban cake from school dinners you can do the same from lunchboxes" and " If you ban these things from the staff room too then it may be acceptable to ban cake" etc.

Needless to say the point was well taken and they didn't go over the top banning things - they just push what they see to be healthy choices. However they did note in the weekly newsletter thanks for the questionnaires and all the additional comments that accompanied them Grin

DaisyDaresYOU · 09/09/2011 12:43

My ds keeps asking for school dinners because he said he wanted pudding.He says yogurts aint the same.He thinks its unfair and hags me all the time now Argh!

DaisyDaresYOU · 09/09/2011 12:48

Mmm I remember clubs and wagon wheels.

lolaflores · 09/09/2011 12:56

schools are quite frankly mental places run by knee jerk reactionary loons who can't see beyond the end of the school door. Bring it up at parent govenor doo daa and see if you can't garner some muscle behind you. Surely other parents think the same. there are parents who fuel their children on rubbish, but they would be in a small group. most folks understand (as we are not fools) what a balanced diet is. I think that inlcudes a bit of sugar and rubbish from time to time, as man cannot live on purity alone. I have found in my experience schools to make high handed decisions, based on the sound knowledge that they know better. time to question that

booge · 09/09/2011 12:58

FFS the world has gone mad. There is nothing wrong with a sweet treat at the end of a child's lunch whether it's packed or hot.

Katiepoes · 09/09/2011 13:23

I may be naive but surely banning evil sweeties just makes them more attractive? And aren't the contents of my child's lunchbox my reposnsibility and not a dinner lady's? Can't you tell the school to cop themselves on and worry about producng literate teens and leave the food facism to their parents?

Is it possible these dinner ladies just fancy a biscuit/cake/chocloate and pinching it from kiddies gives them a power rush? (Am now having visions of cackling Dickens-style warty troll women snatching Kitkats from the tiny hands of huge eyed starving waifs)

pramsgalore · 09/09/2011 13:32

i put fruit flakes in my dc lunch box, they are fruit with yogart covering, not sweets in my book but a treat, when ds was at nursery they would offer free hot meal, but if you took in a packed lunch they would inspect it and throw out anything they deemed unheathy fine i thought fair enough until one day when the manager came into the nursery with a huge choc muffin covered in cream for her tea break i felt like taking it off her, throwing it in the bin and saying 'no not allowed its unhealthy' wish i had Grin the school are not so bad,

madamarcati · 09/09/2011 13:41

Neither my Dcs primary or secondary schools give a monkeys what you send in packed lunches.Quite right too interfering patronising busybodies at some schools!
Incidentally there was an article in the papers afew year ago where govt legal advisors had advised schools that they had no authority to check lunchboxes without child's permission as it amounts to a 'search

Coca · 09/09/2011 14:03

DD2's school has a no carton/pouch policy which is bonkers. It means that they can't take a carton of juice in but they can take a fruit shoot.
It also means that when there are really good deals in shops (bogof) etc we can't make use of the saving.
Hot dinners also consist of stodge with a pudding of sugary stodge and custard.

Fimbo · 09/09/2011 14:20

Secondary schools don't seem to bother as someone else said. Dd will have had chips today at break time as it is "chip Friday".

Coca · 09/09/2011 14:25

I spent years obsessing over a healthy packed lunch for DD1, now she is at her new school she buys a ham sandwich and spends the rest of her money on sweets on the way home. Where's the fricking fruit and veg? Ho hum.

LineRunner · 09/09/2011 15:33

DatsRus, Isn't the bigger Pupil Premium based on FSM numbers, and paid directly to the school? I thought that was worth over £430 per pupil, to be spent on the pupils and the school and not on actual food.

nicolamary · 09/09/2011 15:48

Ok at the risk of feeling the weight police on my back, can I ask what you are putting in your children's lunchboxes? My daughter is 4 and overweight, this is despite my watching everything she eats and her doing horseriding, swimming and dance each week. She's over 99th percentile for both height and weight but is chunky (suspect grandparents aren't adhering to my no crap policy). She started school on Wed and I've gone for the packed lunch so I know what she's eating. I'm giving her either a

  • Sandwich with tuna or cheese or ham (1 piece of granary bread - not sure if I should up this to 2)

  • or a cold pasta salad with pesto

  • a bottle of water

  • grapes or apple or banana

  • 1 x Babybel

  • Rachel's yoghurt

Does this sound reasonable or not?

EssW2 · 09/09/2011 15:51

He had a yogurt. If it's sweetened that's the equivalent of the pineapple cake and custard, isn't it? It's a dessert.

No sweets / chocs doesn't mean no flapjack.

DontCallMeBaby · 09/09/2011 16:32

nicolamary sounds good to me, though I'm no authority. I would do a whole round of sandwich though, not a half, DD is a slow and fussy eater but has had a whole sandwich since Reception (okay, with the crusts cut off, cos if she leaves the crusts she leaves half the sandwich).

It seems that three mini (very mini) cheese scones passed the healthy snack test today. DD would no doubt like them every day, but I will revert to fruit and veg, not least cos I'm not baking scones every week. Thank heavens for a sensible school - I'd be furious if they started introducing silly rules, I'm a governor and I've seen the snacks on offer in the staff room ...

Whoamireally · 09/09/2011 17:27

Stunned reading this thread. Regardless of whether or not it's school policy, is it legal to remove food from a child's lunchbox or refuse to let them eat it without parental permission? This IS Mumsnet. Surely one of you is at least a barrister if not a QC? Could you sue your schools for deprivation of human rights or summat and let us know how you get on please :)

Whoamireally · 09/09/2011 17:29

Btw if it happened at our school, I'd be right in there demanding to see the dinner ladies nutritional qualifications.

HouseOfBamboo · 09/09/2011 17:43

It is of course completely bonkers to allow sponge pudding and custard in school dinners but not so much as a digestive biscuit in a packed lunch.

DD's school doesn't enforce this madness thankfully - she has been sent in with biscuits and flapjacks many a time.

If enough parents complain and point out the ridiculousness then surely it would make a difference.

There's a world of difference between confiscating ANYTHING sweet for no good reason, and having a word with parents who send their kids in with nothing BUT junk.

maxybrown · 09/09/2011 18:01

I THINK, if it is in the school "rules" that you as a parent sign, then yes they can. We never removed stuff though - we had one child that was still sent in with 4 packets of crisps, 2 cakes and 3 or 4 choclate bars and maybe a muller corner that always had something choclatey in it. She said it was because he was fussy and it was to give him choice Hmm thing is he would just sit there and cry anyway (at 9)

I have a fussy DS and the best thing is to make it as minimal as possible as to what goes in. Next week at nursery he will take a sandwich and some fruit - that is all he would eat at home, if I was lucky Grin

whenIgetto3 · 09/09/2011 18:15

we haven't signed any school rules, no parent teacher partnership at our school and if my child is tired due to some sporting commitments they had the night before then I should have the right to put a small chocolate biscuit in their lunchbox once a week so that they get a sugar boost and don't fall asleep in their afternoon lessons, because you can bet if they did fall asleep I would know about it. Must say my school did decided that school sport followed by swim coaching the night before did entitle my DS to a chocolate biscuit the next day, but he had to go eat it in the office away from other children so there were no more comlpaints Shock