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 poor kid was spooked when i gave him my home made oven chips.

He also told me that cheese is an unhealthy food.

The problem is the misinformation that is being [peddled and all the while they are offering chocolate milk in the lunch hall which IMO is totally unnecessary.

Oh and I would love it if UK schools spent more time on maths.

It's not a strange thing to be pissed off about at all, and I completely get where the OP is coming from.
So am a bit at some of the earlier replies.
Why should we be teaching them about so called 'good' and 'bad' foods at the age of 4?!
Therefore giving the impression that they are foods to never have as they're bad.
No food is 'bad' or 'naughty'. If you've got a balanced, healthy diet then the odd chocolate bar or whatever every now and again isn't going to hurt.
I teach mine no food is bad as such.
As long as we're eating healthily 80% of the time, with foods from the main food groups such as carbs, calcium, fruit, veg and protein, we can have the odd treat food as well.
Sweets and chocolate or whatever is fine as long as it's not every day.
That's all you need to know at the age of 4!

He also told me that cheese is an unhealthy food.
When you're a growing child, cheese is NOT an unhealthy food.
THAT'S where schools go wrong then.
You need calcium for your developing bones when you're young. Cheese is a good source of that.
If you're eating healthily then what the hell is wrong with cheese?! It's hardly a family sized bag of Haribo or a mountain of chocolate.

MrRected, do you not see, as I said, how it may be really awful for some children to have pretty much their entire diet labelled as BAD?

I think a degree of sensitivity is required.

Good point Something! I didn't look at from that angle.

I can't, however, see a way around it. You can't sugar coat these things (excuse the terrible pun). I think teaching a responsible approach to eating and making good choices is essential. Kids need to be able to define for themselves what constitutes a "good choice" - if they aren't taught that certain things are bad, then how could they make a good choice?

Arghhh.... it's a double edged sword. For the poor wee souls who are given crap day in and day out, they have no choice to exercise. How terribly frustrating for the them and the teachers.

This is known as ' a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'. Most probably a group of people with no training in nutrition education and even less knowledge, doing a sort of a la carte 'healthy eating' with information acquired from the back of the proverbial fag packet.

There is no such thing as a bad food as all foods play some nutritional role, or they wouldn't be a food. So sugar is a food (simple carbohydrate, energy) as much as brown rice is a food (complex carbohydrate- starch, energy; a little protein and B6,fibre). There is such a thing as a bad diet when, as NoLikey says, foods, and therefore nutrients, are not eaten in balance to your needs.

Telling a child that something is 'bad' is storing up all sorts of trouble, especially for me as a fully trained and experienced Food and Nutrition teacher, when they arrive at secondary school spouting half-baked rubbish about fat being bad for you and carbohydrates the enemy.

So OP, I'd be tempted to ask your DS's head where the staff are getting their information from, as talking about 'unhealthy' food shows remarkable ignorance. And while you're at it, ask how much they really know about the nutritional needs of a 4 year old!

mrrected sugar is bad? Does that include fruit then? I have massive issues with kids being taught good/bad labels for food and being coerced to make 'good' choices out of fear of becoming fat. I've struggled for years to overcome bingeing/purging & starvation patterns due directly to this type of attitude. Do we really think steering kids towards eating disorders or an unbalanced focus on food is actually good for them?

Instead of good/bad I would prefer the "eat lots, eat some, eat little" approach, with a focus on what foods can actually do for you (ie antioxidants, vitamins, effect on organ function, bone growth etc), participating in cooking of meals and the social aspect of food (where it comes from, different cultural practices, use in celebrations etc). This is viewing food as a part of a bigger life, rather than obsessing about it which seems to be the current approach.

MrRected whatever happened to 'everything in moderation'?

Also many healthy foods are processed - olive oil for example is a processed food, would you label that as 'bad'?

Even things like chocolate are fine as an occasional treat.

No, SomethingOnce, but it's a generalisation a 5yo can grasp, and since he started off with a "fat is BAD" message it was necessary to explain that fat gives us energy.

But surely, if you're going to explain these things, it's best not to introduce misconceptions of generally agreed categories?

Energy-rich foods would include both starchy and fatty foods which fall into two groups.

There are lots of good EYFS/KS1 resources online.

Horatia's explanation for a 4/5 year old is great, it will no doubt be refined later.

In fact I think it's quite a useful way of looking at fats and carbohydrates and asking of a particular foodstuff what else is it bringing to the diet along with that energy content.

I have no objection to children being taught about nutrition, but I think they are going about it the wrong way. Instead of bad and good labels, they should phase it as 'more of this, less of that'. Children need to be taught about how food gives them energy, and the different properties of different food groups. I struggle to get my dd to eat fruit, so it is very frustrating when she comes home and tells me fruit is bad for you as it has sugar in it.

The problem comes when a teachers 'healthy eating for growing children' lesson is actually the same as 'advice for how an overweight adult can lose weight'

It's over simplified and child's nutrition is different. Teachers do not know enough about nutrition.

It's a long spectrum - some really bad foods at one end that you should probably not have a diet of just that, super foods at the other end - but you just can't survive on those.

I explain it to my kids like religion - because some people have the same fervour against so-called "bad" foods......

SOME people believe .... some foods are good and bad.... we - your Dad and I (both healthy with BMI 20/21 ) believe that you can eat these so-called "bad" foods in moderation, just don't make them a major part of your diet.... cake is not a major food group.....

I am really pissed off with this healthy/unhealthy thing. Cheese is not unhealthy just as a diet coke is not healthy.
The idea being peddled to children that they should be eating low fat this and aspartame filled 'diet' drinks is very worrying. Yes we need food education in schools but not the way its being done now.
As someone who had an eating disorder as a teen I am concerned about young girls being fixated on food and what is 'good' and 'bad' from the age of 4.

Exactly that, hanginggarden. It has taken me until my 30s to have a healthy relationship with food - at one stage the 'good/bad' food debate (and the 'everyone is overweight these days' one which was also present in my teens) had me believing nothing was 'good' apart from bran and water.

Guess what I lived on. My hair fell out and my metabolism is still fucked. God knows what I put my parents through.

It scares me that some parents I know are cutting out all naturally-occurring sugars and fats from their children's diet. OK, I'm not about to give DD a Pepsi and a plate of lard, but to my mind, if she wants a bit of fruit I'm happy for her to have it, rather than some chemically-laden 'sugar-free' product.

I do take the point that some children are raised in homes where healthy eating is an alien concept, but wouldn't it be better to have some positive encouragement rather than saying 'Fat is BAD. Sugar is BAD. You might think strawberries and oranges are good but they're BAD because they have SUGAR in them and that's BAD'?
Teach 4 year olds to enjoy cooking healthy things, encourage them to be active, and you might be getting somewhere. But of course all the playing fields were sold off ages ago and the curriculum isn't flexible..

Do you want to talk about it, eastdulwichbedwetter?

That's one of the shittiest posts I've read on here!

we have had this recently, we talk a lot at home about foods that are good for us that we eat lots of and foods that aren't so good for us that we don't eat as much.
What annoys me is when they talk about healthy eating, weigh and measure them and then send them out with sweets every bloody week because its someones birthday.

Education is not limited to the classroom, any information from school can be and should be discussed at home too. Do not be angry at the school, use the information which has been learned to guide further learning about food in a way which you deem appropriate. A school aged child will generally be able to understand different viewpoints and terminology.

Edendance I agree they will undersatnd viewpoints at 7 or 8 but ime the younger children usually think teachers are akin to gods and it is frustrating to have to deal with the misinformation. It's ok to be pissed off about this imo.

I agree with the OP. I think this all goes too far.

Personally, I can't stand the "food police" in any of their forms.

I know what foods generally constitute healthy eating and which ones should be more occasional and most of the time I act accordingly.

I won't be dictated to though. I don't like the feeling that governments are using the education system to try and bully parents via their children.

Fire away at me.

Sorry I'm a few days late to this, but I was reminded to come back and read it as I discovered DD had that latest Change4Life leaflet (the one that sparked a few angry threads, and rightly so IMO) in her book bag.

I'm really torn. I know there are a lot of children who are being subjected to really awful diets, and I'd like to think the education will go a little way to help them reverse the damage. I agree with OP and others though, it just doesn't work in reality when the children have no control over what their parents buy and cook and requests for healthier food fall on deaf ears (or are met with defensiveness, as it's viewed as criticism).

However the information can be inaccurate. My DCs' school doesn't seem to have done too much on this but DD has recently been labelling things as "fats and sugars". This has annoyed me because they are lumping two completely different food groups into one, and labelling them as 'bad'. I have since explained that there are good fats like in nuts etc.

Generally I am playing down the negative view and doing what others here have suggested like if DD says this cake is bad I'll say it's not something we'd eat every day but now and again it's nice.

I am focusing on the positive - I really believe a key element in the fight for a healthier future is to get children to love good food (as opposed to just telling them what not to eat). It will be easier to eat less junk food if you actually enjoy the healthy balanced meals you replace it with.

I try and emphasise (when the subject comes up, it's not something we dwell on much) on the benefits of particular foods ie this has vitamin x in which is good for suchandsuch. How eating veg and fruit of different colours can mean different vitamins. Basically a slightly more informative version of the "drink your milk, it'll make you strong" thing our parents did. :o