To be pissed off my 4 yo had to learn about 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' foods

[JumpRope]

We have always had a massive variety of wholefoods for our family meals - loads of veggies, lentils, lean meat, liver,fish, brown rice & pasta etc. DCs eat pretty much all of it, and love my cooking. He's obviously had parties and eaten lots of crap, and we have tins of rice pudding and jelly sometimes etc.
But since going to school, he has started talking a lot about things being healthy and unhealthy. He spent a while asking me whether what he was having was healthy or un - labelling foods in his mind - which pissed me off, because I believe far more important is the overall combination of foods you are taking in, not individual items.
He came home from school today and asked for an 'unhealthy snack'. FFS. I think this is misguided, and we are trying to educate the wrong people about healthy snacking. If they didn't have many crap foods on offer, it wouldn't be the onus on the child to choose the healthy option at school or elsewhere.
Its an independent school, but obv this is an initiative across the board. I think its arse over tit. AIBU?

YANBU.

My middle child is very keen to please the teachers and only take carrot sticks or cucumber etc for breaktime snack at school as you get 2 points for taking a 'good' food snack of vegetables or fruit.

My dd is very slight build and has a very small appetite. I would like her to be able to have something with more calories than carrot sticks or an apple to last her from breakfast until lunch but there is no way she will be different from her friends or go against school policy.

We have similar homework over the years starting at playgroup age-labelling foods healthy and unhealthy, food diary's etc etc.
Its quite sad when a 3 year old is refusing to eat anything that they have been told at playgroup or nursery that is unhealthy.

The school also sent me a letter home when the annual growth/weight check took place to advise me that DD would be considered underweight and that they would like to keep an eye on her weight!

I appreciate that they have to educate the pupils on healthy eating and quite rightly so but do they have to make things so black in white in terms or good/bad. Can they not teach moderation or balance rather than telling a young child this is unhealthy , this is bad-end of?

Haha, xpost with loads of others

YANBU. I frame these discussions in class as 'foods we can eat lots of' and 'foods to eat less often'. I can't stand labelling foods as good or bad. I also stress that eating lots diff foods is good. This is for YR. I hope this gets fixed in their heads before they get any dodgy messages further up the school.
I happily distribute birthday cakes at snack time and explain it's nice treat and lovely to share and celebrate with friends.

A lot of kids grow up in households where they don't get the range of foods your children do. They need to learn the basics of what's "good" and "bad" as they won't learn it at home.

No they won't LEARN it at home - but they'll still get fed it by their parents, won't they, until they leave home !!

In work I cook for nursey age dc OP and the nutrition info on whole wheat is if your having white pasta that day then the next day have brown rice, and sandwiches we use one white one brown slice.

To much fibre isn't good. I'm on my iPad and it's hard to type otherwise I would go into it more

I don't have a problem with kidslearning about healthy eating. What pisses me off is the lunch box police while school dinners are generally shite.

Oh and whoever said upthread-if you give your child a healthy diet you don't have to then worry what school are saying.

That is not true, my children respect their teachers and what information come from them and their classmates are a big input into their lives. They are there 5 days a week!

Knowing about healthy and unhealthy food is part of the Early Years Foundation Stage profile for physical development (40-60 months). If staff don't discuss healthy eating with children how are they supposed to assess this area, as 4 and 5 year olds have very little control over the foods they eat?

in small amounts is what i tell my son "are biscuits bad for you mommy?" yes but not if you eat them in small amounts son

funny that he still wants to eat them

and apparently strawberries (which he hates) are really bad for you

i think they have to make the emphasis because of the government guidelines due to obesity however the government have failed to take in to account they have cut funding for sports school fields playing fields etc and put more emphasis on PSRE and languages rather than an extra playtime or sports they never come home and say MOM I WANT TO GO JOGGING do they

chubbymummy Of course they should discuss healthy eating but it is the way that it is presented to them that causes concern.

YANBU.

I have no problem with children being taught about some foods being better for you then others. I do have a problem with foods being labled 'good' or 'bad'.

I think a lot of children are picking up bits that relate to them and don't really understand. We had with my neice she was told potaoes are bad for you, when she was 7/8 so she stopped eating them. Ok fine but she doesn't eat any other carb.

As I said on another thread today I have who is a psychiatric nurse specializing in children with eating disorders and is seeing younger and younger children all the time. So we do need to promote healthy living but I think we need to a more overall veiw of healthy eating.

YANBU - the information is frequently inaccurate.
Teachers are not nutritionists and a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing.

It has to be kept simple but I agree, no food should be labeled as "bad". It should be presented as foods that are healthy (like it or not that word HAS to be in there) and foods that we shouldn't eat too much of.

Many children are raised in homes where they're raised on junk, the schools need to educate where the parent's can't or won't. It's essential for any hope of individual children recognising that their diet is inadequate/unhealthy and pestering their parents to improve it. It's important to try create a culture amongst children of shunning crap for breakfast, lunch, dinner and various snacks in favour of healthy habits. There's no need for them to be as ignorant as their parents.

A public funded health system can only be sustainable if the majority of the population are healthy and contributing to it rather than making themselves unnecessarily ill and disabled through bad diet. Prevention is better (and cheaper) than cure.

So the kids have to educate their own parents into buying foods they have no idea how to cook and don't even like/probably won't eat themselves? I don't think its a good way to tacking the problem.

Yanbu!!!!!

Was gutted when my reception aged bit came home talking about good and bad food.

I understand they have to educate children about healthy eating choices, but it's the one size fits all mentality that winds me up.

My boy is allergic to about twenty different foods, including dairy. None of the healthy eating advice applies to him, and I struggle to get enough far into him. He is a very skinny child.

Yesterday he told me he couldn't eat chips because they are bad food. He is worried about getting fat. I could cry
,

Bit? I meant ds.

Damn autocorrect.

I agree with FredFred. Teach your child to think critically, and that school is not always right.

It's annoying because it's such an oversimplification, and unnecessarily so.

My 5yo is going through this at school too. I've said that it's best not to have too much of any food that only gives you energy (he is happy with the idea of basic food groups ie energy, protein, vitamins). So now we are prioritising "foods that do two jobs" and his obsession with "five a day" is waning.

If they want a simple version, "sometimes foods" and "everyday foods" is the way to go. Not "healthy" and "unhealthy" which IMHO are adjectives to describe diets, not foodstuffs.

Yabu. I use healthy and unhealthy to describe food, and will continue to do so. There is nothing good for you in haribo, ergo it's unhealthy.

I once had to do an activity around this with young children.

Labeling food good/bad, or healthy/unhealthy, seemed a bad idea, not least because it concerned me that some children may feel stigmatised due to their families' food choices.

I went for 'healthy' and 'not so healthy' in the end, and emphasised that the latter were ok sometimes, just not all the time.

It's a tricky one.

I don't think 'energy' is regarded as a food group, Horatia...

Please... It's the curriculum at this age. Grin and hope they remember an iota if it when they're older.

DC went through this stage... Complement them on their great mastery of lesson, etc. And believe me, I heard plenty about healthy/unhealthy options at that stage, comments on me being (over)weight, etc. My DC to this day still have a drawer with loads of sweets, crisps, crap ... To eat at will. Rarely do they choose the "unhealthy" options ... (DC at 10th percentile for weight for their age ... Free range snacking hasn't hurt so far & they prefer the healthier options.)

Sorry OP but YAB INCREDIBLY U!

What would you like the school to teach them? Do you think that school is just there to teach the three R's?

Think, for one second, about the many, many children who don't come from a home where a nutritious diet is the norm. These children deserve an education which gives life skills. How else would they learn that Maccas for lunch and a microwave meal for tea is not an optimal dietary approach.

I think you may need to homeschool your child.

Coming back to this.

Many foods should be labelled as BAD! The earlier kids this, the better it will be for their health!

Sugar is bad! Processed foods are bad! Coca Cola is bad! Diet products containing aspartame are bad!

There is no black and white here, kids should know that these foods are bad, much the same as cigarettes are bad!