To think it's strange that the school is doing this?

[summersblue]

My sister who is 14 and is in Year 10 has told me recently that a new thing has come in where at lunch time they have to have a pudding with their meal. When I asked what she meant, she told me that until September you would get your meal (the main, potato item and veg) and then you could choose to have a pudding if you wanted to but if you didn't want one that was fine.

However she said this September it all changed and now it has become compulsory to have a pudding with it. Even if you tell the dinner ladies you don't want one, they won't let you leave and pay until you pick one. My sister has always had quite a small appetite, ever since she was a baby and doesn't really like having a pudding. She likes to just have her meal and that's it and she's always been this way.

I told her just to take the pudding but not actually eat it and she says that's what she would normally do except if a teacher catches you taking your tray away and you haven't eaten it, they will send you back and not let you go until you've eaten it. This has only happened to her once apparently even though she'd eaten all her main meal and kept telling the teacher she was full and didn't want any more. She still sent her back though and she had to eat it. The kids who don't want pudding tend to just sneak away away when nobody is looking but sometimes people will still be caught and sent back.

I can't be the only one who thinks this is odd. Fine have pudding for those who want it but to make people who don't want it have some seems a bit too much. Sending them back to eat it too seems especially over the top. The puddings are apparently quite stodgy too - cake and custard, etc. There's seldom any choice to have something lighter like fruit or jelly.

Is this common practice in schools these days?

This sounds like my school in the 1970s but I am astonished that a school behaves like that today. At DDs school they choose and pay for what they like.

Is there a fruit option - then she could slip an unwanted apple in to her pocket to eat later

Another 1970's girl here and we had to take a pudding whether we wanted it or not. We used to take them straight to the slop tray and put them in there. It almost sounds as if the catering company are trying to prove how many portions of food they manage to shift in a day - wonder if the contract has been renegotiated or is about to be

A slightly manky apple hidden in a pocket is always going to be better than a greasy stodgy pudding forced down so as not to get the wrath of the dinner ladies

Do you think they hold the kids hostage until they've eaten it AAAAALL up?

Argh, you've just taken me back to the horror of school dinners when they did exactly that (was primary though, not secondary). I used to be the only one left in the hall with my bowl of cold lumpy custard (while they tidied tables around me but wouldn't let me leave) and after several occasions when I was late for afternoon lessons my mum went to the school and complained. I started taking sandwiches after that, and ate them in another room so can only imagine she wiped the floor with them .
(Was nearly 40 years ago but I could still name the dinner ladies and the cook who made my life a misery ).

It does seem a little unlikely that such things could be happening nowadays, especially with older students but you never know. Perhaps someone has read some report about children not being able to learn on an empty stomach and is taking it to extremes. Or something.

Seems to be a two pronged thing.

Dinner ladies saying to take a pudding as in the price,

Refusing to take money unless a pudding with the meal-perhaps the students should just go & sit & eat then!

Teachers trying to stop students throwing away a pudding without having eaten any of it.

Oops-that's three prongs!

And tbh, the third is the only one I can understand.

But of course if they've been forced to take a pudding that they don't want-then it's all senseless!

I can see them saying that they may as well have a pudding as it's included in the price, but I can't see that many teachers having the time or patience to play pudding police. That bit sounds totally far fetched.

If the school doesn't have a problem with eating disorders, it soon will - nothing like overriding a body's natural sense of when it's full to start causing problems! Obesity and bulimia anyone?

If this is indeed the case then you need to challenge it with the Head.

Apart from anything else, I thought they were supposed to be obsessed with the obesity epidemic, healthy eating and all that. There are numerous stories of the 'lunchbox police' taking chocolate buttons away from tiny tots so why would they force stodgy puddings on teenagers?
(not saying I disbelieve OP, stranger things have happened, it just doesn't seem to make much sense).

I remember this horror. Semolina pudding. It filled me with dread just to think about it.

One dreadful day, the kitchen had made too much and we had to have compulsory seconds. Disbelief and horror. This couldn't really be happening.

Our dinner ladies had grown up during the war so probably thought an extra helping of semolina was bliss.

Oh yes, I vividly remember - fifty years ago and I still remember.

It's a bit of a weird school setting to be honest, at the high schools I've been to myself and as a nurse, students just wonder into the dinner hall from the school yard, get what they want, eat what they want or save for later and that's that.

And there would have been MAJOR kicking off if we'd have been forced to eat all our food, and a pudding.

At my private girls' secondary they took registration at lunch to make sure all the girls were there - you couldn't skip lunch, and if you did you'd be in serious trouble. The teachers would then watch you eat to make sure you weren't just pushing your food around. This went on until age 16.

An awful lot surprisingly did manage to wind up anorexic/bulemic and I wonder whether the energy spent forcing adults and near-adults to have lunch when they didn't really fancy it was completely wasted and should have been spent on educating us about nutrition rather than acting like the Stasi.

This was less than 10 years ago, which makes me a bit less surprised by the OP than it seems most are!

Okay, an update. Apparently there was an incident before the summer holidays involving a couple of students with eating disorders. There were complaints made to the school, claiming that they hadn't done enough to make sure students were actually eating. Hence they decided to make the pudding compulsory rather than an optional extra.

If a student doesn't eat it and a teacher or a dinner lady notices they are meant to ask why they didn't eat it and are supposed to encourage () them to eat it. However they are not meant to tell them outright to go back and eat it.

I think this is a very strange way of dealing with this. For starters, like has been mentioned not everybody eats from the dining room. Some people take packed lunches, some people go home, etc. Even those who do eat from the dining room don't always eat the pudding anyways so it's pretty pointless.

Tbf I think it would be impossible to keep track of who is eating and who is not in a big secondary school.

So some weren't eating enough & now everyone neds to eat a pudding!

Good grief!

Wouldn't it be better to take note of who regularly doesn't eat much?

Sounds reasonably logical to me for the dinner lady to check that they are eating some type of pudding but they should offer fruit or some lighter option. Unfortunately eating disorders are much more common in our schools than we think.

Um, why?

Nobody 'needs' pudding so why would a dinner lady need to check you're eating one?

Some people just aren't pudding people. That doesn't mean they have an eating disorder. I have never been one for pudding after a meal, even as a child. My sister is the same way.

I could understand being concerned if someone was barely eating anything on their plate but if you've eaten most/all of your main meal not having a pudding afterwards is not a big deal.

I also think people with eating disorders would go out of their way to avoid eating in the dining hall. They could easily say they'd had a packed lunch or went home for dinner even though they hadn't. But as people do that anyways nobody would question it. That's why I think this is not going to work. Something like this is just too hard to police in a secondary school.

I've told my sister just to take an apple as her pudding and if she doesn't want it, she can always just bring it home and give it to her guinea pigs which she thinks is a good idea. I can't see this lasting much longer so it'll probably be a temporary thing.

Tell her to take a container in her bag and discreetly put the pudding in that, then take home or throw it out late.

Some people with eating disorders would be quite happy to eat the pudding as long as they could sneakily make themselves sick (or perhaps take laxatives) afterwards, after all lots of girls manage to hide eating disorders from their families until they are in quite a bad way as they can be very cunning and make it look as if they are keen to eat food. Therefore pudding-eating/not pudding eating wouldn't necessarily be an indicator of problems or a cure.

Can the school really think it's as simple as saying "eat a pud"?

theaandrea that's probably what the people with anorexia are doing already!

Surely "forcing/pressurising" kids to eat food they don't want is the best route to developing eating disorders?

How fucking stupid.

Ha so now they are encouraging bullemia.
Whoever decided this policy is a bloody idiot who doesn't have an ounce of knowledge about the complexities of eating disorders.
I would kick up a huge fuss, and demand to meet with the nutritionist who the school are working closely with... Oh wait. Chances are, there isn't one.

I agree with people saying that forcing people to eat something thru don't want is liable to push them towards eating disorders.

Nobody 'needs' pudding so why would a dinner lady need to check you're eating one?

If this had happened at my DN's school, when she was 14, she might just have managed to stave off the anorexia that is slowly killing her now at 16.

It was due to nobody really noticing how little she was eating that allowed it to get to the point of no return.

I think for those who are well on their way into an eating disorder, this would have no effect whatsoever, or as others have said, push them into bulimia possibly. However, if it is generally accepted that everyone eats a 'normal' portion of food followed by enjoying a pudding, then those who are 'on the cusp' of an eating disorder might just be brought back, or at least it might get noticed early enough.

I think it sounds as though the school have recognised they have a potential problem, and they're trying to address it by encouraging a more healthy attitude to food.