to think that if school dinner puddings are unhealthy EVERY DAY, then I can

[CocktailQueen]

give my dc a gingerbread biscuit in his packed lunch??

School is cracking down on 'treats' in packed lunches. So no crisps, sweets, biscuits etc. except for one treat on Friday. Fair enough. But they have kept 'unhealthy' school dinner puddings - chocolate crispie cake, chocolate pud with custard, etc.! How is that fair?

Now, my ds is skinny and always on the go, and he needs some fat in his diet! So I gave him the gingerbread biscuit yesterday and he said he had to hide it to eat it in case the dinner lady saw him and took it away!

It is bonkers. The school lunch puddings are full of fat and sugar, but you can't even take fruit juice in a packed lunch. I think they want kids to stop taking packed lunches so they can nanny us all a bit more.

It's really annoying isn't it. The meals are rarely healthy at our school. Fish and chips, pizza etc followed by cakes yet they police the lunch boxes. It seems that if you pay them it's ok.

My solution would be to stop the puddings with school dinners every day! One of my children is a tad podgy because she loved cakes and biscuits and I wish I could persuade her to eat fruit instead but the lure of the dessert is too much for her.

I have cut out fruit juice at home and cut back on the cakes and biscuits but it is a uphill struggle especially as relatives send sweet stuff all the time too, I'd rather they stopped stodgy puddings at school and then we could have the occasional cake at home.

It's when the restrictions make no sense that it gets annoying. When suggested "replacements" are full of sugar or sweeteners and zero nutrition.

A home made cake cake or biscuit with a small number of ingredients isn't allowed yet a Kellogg's cereal bar (so basically air and sugar and additives) is allowed.

A couple of squares of dark chocolate along side nuts and raisins isn't allowed but hey a fruit winder is.

They can serve a double carb whammy of macaroni and cheese and garlic bread but a small handful of crisps along side a chicken and salad sarnie isn't allowed.

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There is not always a choice, LoveBeing. The school is looking for a new school dinners supplier but I think they should have left packed lunches alone will a new supplier was in place, so they could handle sweets/treats policy fairly for both packed lunches and school dinners.

I agree that they are punishing all parents for a few sending in useless packed lunches, but what will they do if those few parents keep sending in banned items and the child's entire lunch is confiscated???

Vindscreen - is it a low-fat biscuit? Is it homemade??

I can't speak to health. But one thing I would say is that growing up, there were times when I didn't get enough to eat at home, and having a massive school lunch really helped. (I was thin as a rake and the dinner ladies used to tip we a wink and give me a massive portion of carbs! I am very grateful to this day).

DD's school is much fairer than most I have heard about, there are desserts such as applie pie and custard, sponge cake etc on the school dinner menu, but they do not act like the food police over a jaffa cake etc in lunch boxes. DD usually has a treat size milky way, cookie or a tunnock's tea cake in her lunch bopx twice a week and she has never had it confiscated, I just ensure the rest of her unch is well balanced.

If they did start to do this, I would be expecting them to remove desserts from the school dinner menu too, otherwise I'd be kicking up a huge fuss.

thetallesttower I would agree with that. There is no need to for a school to feed children these things.

struggling I understmd your pov but if puddings were removed they could put the (tiny) amount from the pudding into improving the actual lunch.

And as for 'low fat' and 'sweetners' etc I get really pissed at local authority saying these things are healthy.

I always wonder why they still do a pudding every day for school lunches. It's always a sponge and custard or similar. Surely that's the next thing to go? It made sense post war when people were hungry and houses weren't centrally heated and all that stuff but few people need those extra calories or that habit any more.

Our lunches at school are great - apart from the unnecessary pud. shouldn't it be once a week on a friday?

I'd much rather my child had a small portion of the "proper" version of a pudding once or twice a week, than the massive slab of "low fat low sugar" crap they serve every day.

This is such a frequent complaint (an such an utterly justified and reasonable one, too) on MN, that I wonder if it would be something MN could take up as one of their campaigns?

Healthy eating is vital - we all know that. But the people making the decisions about what is healthy for primary school children should know what they are talking about - for example, an earlier poster mentioned their school advocating low-fat cheese - children need fat so that their bodies can absorb the fat-soluble vitamins, so any school advocating low fat options all the time is wrong.

And as long as a school is providing puddings like chocolate krispie cake or sponge and custard as part of their school dinners, they cannot confiscate sensible treats from children having packed lunches. Obviously, if a child has a cold kebab and a mars bar, or a bag of candy floss, that should be confiscated, and the child given a school dinner - but most parents send in a packed lunch that is balanced and sensible, and meets their child's needs. Any school providing chocolate puddings and confiscating home made gingerbread or a little sponge cake should be accused of hypocrisy, loudly and often!

It is also one of the reasons that I breathe a huge sigh of relief that my three are well past the primary school stage - and went through it before this obsessive policing of lunch boxes started.

SDT I agree, it is one of my gripes about school dinners and their 'healthy eating advice'. We were sent home one of those change for life leaflets, which I believe is Government endorsed, one of the changes suggested was switching fruit juice/squash to the 'no added sugar' varieties, I am pretty sure a bit of sugar is better than all the artificial sweeteners in the low/no sugar versions surely? [hmmm]

Our infant school and junior school do not police lunchboxes

In our infant and junior school the meals are nutritionally balanced and calorie counted, this cannot be said for the majority of packed lunches including that of my own children

I appreciate that this may not happen in all schools

Don't get me started on low fat, low sugar and artificial sweetener rubbish.

Children, IMO, should not be eating any of the above. Chemical rubbish.

My DD is in reception - when we viewed the school we were told that, although they were a 'Healthy School', that there was no policing of lunch boxes or anything like that, they just didn't allow choc bars or sweets. Fair enough, we thought, good policy. Four months on, they have now decided no trace of chocolate is allowed - so a few choc chips in a cereal bar puts it on the banned list. They have also decided to become a 'water only' school, so all squash and juice is banned - even freshly squeezed, low sugar etc. A friend of mine who's DS doesn't like plain water sent him in with a squeeze of lemon juice in his - it was confiscated by the lunch supervisors and he was given a cup of tap water instead, which he wouldn't drink, therefore going thirsty for the rest of the day. How is that healthy or beneficial? All this while the usual processed crap is served to the school dinner kids. Ridiculous.

children need fat so that their bodies can absorb the fat-soluble vitamins, so any school advocating low fat options all the time is wrong.

Ours does this, and also tries to make us give margarine instead of butter, which I find jaw-dropping. Processed low fat cheese and trans-fat, chemical-laden spreads instead of farmhouse cheddar and natural butter... and the woman is trying to tell us how to feed our kids?!

Dd started school dinners this year and tbh I'm really disappointed. They've left my dd with a sweet tooth that she never had before for chocolate and cookies. Everyday is cake and custard and jelly, icecream (!), chocolate cake, cookies...you get the idea. Oh, the only fruit pudding they have is a slice of orange and that's once in a blue moon.

For lunch I used to give dd a fruit salad without fail and a vegetable salad. Once a week or every 2 weeks I'd give her a small chocolate snack bar or cake and usually that was never eaten. The fruit was though.

I have no problem with coke, chocolates and sweets, but only occasionally. I don't make pudding at home everyday with dinner (its not necessary) and dd has started demanding something sweet for after dinner too. They're teaching and promoting bad eating habits IMO. This is why I'm starting her on packed lunches again next term.

I have to say, I'd be happier if juice and squash were banned at DD's school. Before school, she had juice at weekends only for a treat. now she has it every time she has school dinners.

If I had my way school dinners would be both free and compulsory unless child had specific allergies ( or similar) that couldn't be accommodated by baying school dinner.

This won't be popular on mn I know but feeling outspoken.

Can't underestimate value of all eating same thing imo even if not what every single mum would choose.

I would be happy for them to be free and compulsory if, and only if school dinners were freshly cooked, from raw ingredients, contained no transfats or ingredients more at home in a science lab than a kitchen, and if sweet desserts were an occasional treat, not a daily occurrence.

According to my dses, the 'cheese' used in a lot of the dishes at our local senior school is powdered and reconstituted. How can that be healthy?

I hope they never become compulsory tbh. Wouldn't serve a dog with them half the time.

People are lucky enough to go to a tiny school who feeds the pupils home grown locally farmed stuff and thinks that's what every one gets.

It's not, trust me. Our school doesn't cook on site it's all brought in. No thanks.

I have thought about the fact that it might be harder to keep standards up/ raise standards if they were compulsory and I admit I don't have the answer.

But this is in my ideal world...

I think my dd's school has good school dinners but they are the same as most of our area (in outer London).

BUT I think there is a lot to be gained by them all sitting down together having the same thing. Weirdly my dd picks the fruit rather than the cakes quite alot (they seem to have quite good things like pineapple) but I'm not sure whether that is common place.

Well they won't all sit together. There's not enough space in the hall. And serving everyone and giving them time to eat would take hours.