or have the school gone bonkers?

[ohballs2013]

got a letter last night, in the new teacher info pack.
the school have said that as of the new school term a few more items have been added to the not allowed in lunch box list.
we already had the normal,
no nuts
no fizzy drinks
no bars of chocolate

now we also have

no bananas
no berry fruit, including anything containing berry fruit, such as smoothies, youghurts, cereal bars etc
no fish
no eggs
no crisps
no citrus fruits
no peices of meat, ie chicken legs.

now i get that you have to protect as many kids with allergies as possible..but WTF. is it not going a bit mad?
my own child has coeliacs, so i know all about limited diets, but im astonished at this.

You can't run a whole school around the needs of one or two children. It is up to the parents, in conjunction with the head, to come up with a workable solution eg the children going home for lunch or eating in a separate room, not to expect every parent to scrutinize labels to make sure there's no berries or eggs or whatever contained in the iingredients or to deprive their children of healthy food.

I would be asking serious questions about the Head's ability to manage. Her solution to this problem seems to be to throw it all on the parents' shoulders while she covers her arse by sending out that list.

Sorry by 'up to the parents' I meant the parents of the two children involved, not parents in general.

www.anaphylaxis.org.uk/schools/help-for-schools

Agree with selectausername s/he talks sense. Sounds like both the parents and school have had knee jerk panic reaction. It needs to be carefully thought through with professional advice. The children at risk are not well served by this attitude as it will cause a backlash from other parents as it is unreasonable.

I wonder whether there might also be a spot of arse-covering going on - so if any child does have an allergic reaction, the school can say that they had notified parents of the banned foods. Of course, thats doesn't get round the utterly ridiculous situation of school dinners having this stuff in.

If the danger to the allergic children is so severe that even exposure in the same room to the allergen causes a reaction, wouldn't it be safer to have them eat under supervision in another room ?

Also, how will the school's fruit for infants programme be affected ? AFAIK schools don't get a lot of choice about what's delivered ( maybe they can opt out of certain foods? ) . IME satsumas, bananas, and dried berry fruits all regularly appear.

The school's gone bonkers. DS1 has allergies to milk, eggs and soya and there's no need to control what others eat around him. That list would make it very difficult to give him a balanced diet. Surely the children concerned can't be THAT sensitive to ALL those foods to ban them???

My SiL has a collegue with a serious orange allergy that's triggered when the zest is punctured and sprays into the air. There are signs up to tell people to peel oranges at home which removes the allergen without depriving everyone else of the food. He's only senstive to inhaling the spray, so another person eating the actual fruit is safe.

Seems a pointless thing to do, really. They must know that there is no way they can ever guarantee that no child will bring in these foods, therefore to keep the allergic children safe they're going to have to put in place extensive precautions anyway. So all they achieve is pissing off a lot of parents for no benefit whatsoever.

There are no bans whatsoever at our school.

The kids are not allowed to swap lunches (a bit sad maybe but reasonable).

There are multiple children with allergies. No-one has had a single reaction, because the school pay attention.

Bans don't work, they just promote a false sense of security.

Tbh, and cynical, everything but the crisps and chicken can be found in the average innocent smoothie. Maybe the kid had a reaction to one and that's why they don't know what the specific allergen is...

Well the reason has become apparent in todays news!

Because they are trying to get everyone having school dinners you mean and ban packed lunches? I can't see how that would work unless they offer free school dinners as people will refuse to pay.

xylem8- linky?

linky here

I wouldn't force our school dinners on anyone. They are rank.

Our school dinners are lovely.

Ours are made with processed junk. I had to eat them as I was filling in as dinner staff were off sick.

This ban school lunches campaign really annoys me. My pack lunches cost half a school dinner and with 3 kids I can't afford £35 per week on dinners.

Added to the fact that I cook in the evening anyway, and don't want to cook to feed me and dh and then make something else for dcs.

If I want them to be obese, then 2 cooked meals a day would do it!

It really annoys me that packed lunches are listed as less nutritious than school dinners. That depends on what you put in them, and the quality of the diners on offer. Ours are quite tasty, but really low on fruit/veg. (especially if they don't eat the veg because it is overcooked and revolting)

When we're trying to encourage children to eat a varied diet and include as many different foods as possible this seems very excessive and hard to justify!
I'm a registered dietitian so if you'd like me to write a letter you could send to the school I'd be happy to.

If I want them to be obese, then 2 cooked meals a day would do it!

Not necessarily.

All that will happen if they try to enforce school dinners is more parents not paying.

Then what will schools do? Will they refuse to feed the kids? So silly.

Mine both used to have school lunches. But then dd started to get a bit podgy and I found out that she was frequently having 2 or more puddings every day because the dinner lady used to give them out to the last class in the dinner hall.

I decided that I'd have a much better idea of her actual intake if I were to make packed lunches. They actually have really good packed lunches with variety and for less money than school dinners. Often it's a case of filling a hot flask with soup, curry or pasta, sometimes sandwiches, sometimes salad. Varied fruit and carrot/cucumber sticks. Have heaps of things in the freezer that I can put into the lunch box the night before to defrost, like scones/pasties and so on. What they don't eat comes home with them.

Unlike dd, ds1 is extremely fussy. I had hoped that having school lunches would increase the chances of him trying different things, with peer pressure and different environment. But what actually happened was that he chose baked potato every day, ate the grated cheese off the top, left the potato and nibbled on some cucumber. He doesn't like sauces or 'wet' food like stews, curries or pasta.

I've had the school lunches from time to time. Wasn't very impressed. Though the convenience of just paying and having one less thing to remember is appealing.

Coming late to this party, seen news.

Returning to op orig post; I'd ignore the list entirely. I am very sorry if a child is allergic but I don't see how lists like these address the issue. Therefore I'd ignore until the school explained properly at a parents evening/discussion thing.

That won't be liked but is truthful and likely what many would do, ignore and see what happened...

Why on earth would two cooked meals a day make a child obese? Not if they are good healthy meals, with plenty of vegetables.

I see the issue with children only eating certain items at lunch. At our school the teachers sit with the children and encourage eating of all the food items (in a nice way), so that doesn't happen. I think that's an important aspect of school dinners - not just serve it up and leave them to it.

bumblechum - that is assuming they aren't eating two portions of apple crumble and custard, after a lunch with few veg, which is what I see with lots of school dinners (see what pooka said)