Lunchbox suspension..

[JunoMacGuff]

here

It's from a DM article apparently though I refuse to investigate that.

A school have really suspended a child based on his parents actions? And those actions were to give him mini cheddars?

It is selection by the back door, if the parents don't do as the teachers say then your child will be excluded. It strikes of bullying and has this odourous institutional stink about it

School is not about learning anymore but about parents being continually threatened with punishments unless they do as they are dictated

Frankly, unless a child's lunchbox is harbouring a pack of Marlborough lights or clinking with Gordon's miniatures the school staff should be keeping their noses out IMHO.
A healthy diet is important but I have no faith in school based lunchbox policing as a way of improving the health of the nation.

Does anybody really believe this is about his lunchbox. Despite the daily mail 'forlorn child holding up his two bags of cheddars' picture.

Do we actually think a head teacher has acted out of spite, punishing a child because his parents sent the wrong food?

As others have said, there's clearly more to it.

I don't believe school dinners are healthier as they have a pudding everyday. How can this be right when it's not allowed in a packed lunch?

Why are schools also still using sweets as rewards and encouraging cake sales etc.

I don't believe all children should get free school meals. Why should somebody less off than I am, pay taxes towards feeding my child? especially when it always includes a pudding

I don't think that this is anything more than a response to the parents' continuing refusal to toe the school's line on "healthy eating". There seem to have been several meetings between the headteacher and the parents, which got steadily more acrimonious, and resulted in deadlock. The school has now resorted to its final sanction of suspending the child, in an effort to force the parents to comply. Total and utter over-reaction and completely unfair to the child.

Would a child who is taken home for dinner from the same school punished if they were given Cocoa Pops and an ice cream for their dinner?

sibling but I am telling you that you are wrong!

I have said, and will again. I cook everything from scratch. I have coeliac disease so kind of have to anyway, but even before I did. Never bought a ready meal in 15 years. Never bought so much as a tin of soup that's been pre prepared.

This is for eating at home. Everything we cook and eat is 100% homemade.

When we are out, or making a packed lunch, we use 'convenience' items, for, ahem, convenience. So Dunkers, babybels, yoghurt tubes etc.

I have no idea why you think the two can't correlate.

If it helps - I haven't the time to prepare and cook a meal in the morning, have it cool, and pack it up for children's lunches. So they get a standard sandwich and snack affair.
Often DH and I take leftovers to reheat but we have reheating facilities at our work places. Children don't have this.

a parent who cares so little for what their child eats at lunch that they would send them Dunkers/ fries/ crisps...
What a of sanctimonious, high-horsey, presumptous bullshit.
DFO. Really.

load of

Juno i'm not suggesting sending full roast dinner in, but as you're making a sandwich are you saying you then do not have time in the morning (or night before) to chop up a carrot or chunk of cheese, or make a load of blueberry muffins one weekend to freeze? That's the only difference here. Hardly major inconvenience, but cheaper, healthier, better for environment...

To those who believe their kids when they tell them they don't have time to eat a banana; how long do you think it takes them to open the wax covering and wrapper from a baby bel, or open a Dunkers box? They don't have time for healthy stuff because it takes twice as long to open the rest of the 'convenient' lunch (unless they're well practised from a young age!)

Sibling - a Babybel is Edam cheese. So is it the fact that its Dutch cheese what's bothering you? Would a chunk of cheddar be better? Or do you think we should all be making our own cheese (alongside batches of muffins) to be good mothers?

Edam, cheddar; I have no issue with it's origin. As long as it's not over-processed, shaped into cute little balls and covered in mountains of packaging!

We all should be eating food that's had as little done to it as possible, with the fewest ingredients (the farm or factory rule). We're teaching our children that we can be nourished from a petrol station forecourt, which doesn't set them up with healthy ideas about food and food production.

I wouldn't believe when they say they don't have time to open a banana (though I've never heard this) but the simple fact is, kids like stuff that's in cool/colourful packaging. Facts.

So yeah, they prefer a dairylea to a banana. So the dairylea gets eaten, and the banana doesn't.

And I do chop up cheese/carrots/apples etc sometimes. I've said that in my earlier posts. But sometimes. And sometimes they get a dairylea Dunkers or a babybel.

I genuinely can't believe you think it means I don't care or I don't feed my children properly.

Er, so eone needs to twll the school that Mini Cheddars are NOT crisps!

I apologise unreservedly then Juno-I misjudged you. My vitriol is clearly aimed at the wrong person!

And I don't teach them that they can be nourished from a petrol station forecourt .

A balanced diet without restrictions is actually the healthiest way to eat.

I can almost guarantee that if you deny your children anything processed, or anything designed to entice children (like the foods we have mentioned), they will be first in line when they are old enough to buy it themselves. As soon as they have pocket money/freedom to enter shops alone.

I'm not saying my kids won't, they bloody will! If I let then choose something in a shop, they'll pick a sweetie, not an apple.

But if you make it taboo, it makes it more exciting. And they'll over indulge later on.

Poor boy

accepted sibling.

I'm surprised the school hasn't banned ham sandwiches.

Do you know the level of salt in them?

And all that fat in cheese. Sugar in fruits. It's natural but it's still sugar.

The whole degree of healthiness is a spectrum.

I give my DC fruit yoghurts. In a tube. He survives. Plus a fruit bar because he won't eat fruit. Occasionally he gets flapjacks or crisps in there.

He eats it. It gives him energy. And I know a hell of a lot more about nutrition than people in DS's school. Unless they've also got a medical and clinical background.

Ham sandwich

Calories  233, 12%of your GDA
Sugar 3g, 3%of your GDA
Fat 4g, 6%of your GDA
Saturates 1g, 5%of your GDA
Salt 1.8g, 30%

Mini Cheddars

Calories 131, 7%of your GDA
Sugar 1g, 1%of your GDA
Fat 8g, 11%of your GDA
Saturates 3g, 15%of your GDA
Salt 0.5g, 8%

So a bit more saturated fat. But less salt. And sugar.

I haven't had time to read the entire thread, but some of what I have read has made me feel so guilty and sad all over again about 'the food issues'.

5 yo DD is mega fussy - only eats four cooked meals in total, and these don't work for the lunchbox. So she has packed lunch. Yet she will only eat two sandwich fillings (cheese or marmite). And has never eaten fruit or veg or wet food, bar yoghurt or fruit purée. So she has fruit smoothies, yoghurt tubes, cheddar sticks, veggie sausages etc, flap jacks and ... Mini cheddars, which she isn't keen on but I literally ran out of ideas!

Dd can eat a banana pretty quickly. That's why she generally has one for fruit break - she can eat it and get in a little playing. I don't want to give her yet another for lunch. It can easily take her half an hour to eat an apple, so those are out. Sometimes I'll do her a little pot of grapes and strawberries.

She takes a Wholemeal ham sandwich (naice ham OF COURSE), some crisps (potatoes, oil, but of flavouring), apple juice, a yoghurt pouch, a small cereal bar. She can eat it all in a shirt enough timespan to actually get some outdoor play, she likes it, she will reliably eat it with no waste. We don't eat a a family till 5.30-6 so her lunch needs to keep her going, so it needs to be relatively calorific, easy to eat an appealing enough that she will eat it.

Her evening meal is invariably home cooked, unprocessed and full of vegetables. I'm not sure why that's such an incredible concept. I'm fully capable if chopping veg sticks in the morning. I don't because they won't get eaten. I supply a lunch to please the child eating it, not the self appointed food police.

Holly you're hardly comparing like for like. A ham sandwich is proper food, whereas cheddars are an addition, a treat.

If your goal is just to find foods with the lowest salt/fat/sugar etc then send an apple. Would be better than a pack of cheddars.

Ham is a processed food it is not proper and has to take its place next to cheddars

Of course ham is processed, ivykaty44.

We send DD with a live pig and a swiss army knife to cleave hunks from it. Pot-bellied pigs are a good compromise as they have plenty of meat but are relatively easy to carry. When they stopped being fashionable a few years back they were much cheaper though, so we've since had to train DD not to kill them on the first day. If she does it right it can still be just about alive by Friday.