..to take the piece of paper given to ds2 to write his food diary and write on it myself?

[TantrumsAndBalloons]

Something along the lines of "stick it up your arse"

I'm furious. Ds2 is 10. He has to write everything he eats for the next 2 days, the teacher will then give a prize to the person with the "best" diet.

I hate this. I hate the lunchbox police. I hate that they are teaching DCs that there are good and bad foods when there's no such bloody thing IMO

Food is food. I don't ban sugar or whatever, I don't give low fat yoghurt or sugar free squash to a 10 year old. Or supposedly healthy cereal bars.
He eats a balanced diet which includes "bad" foods.

But do you know what has really really pissed me off?

We are going out for dinner to celebrate my DN birthday. We are going to tgi Fridays cos the DCs love it. My ds2 is now really worried that he is going to get in trouble.
He is saying to me that he won't have the Oreo milkshake that he loves and only has once a year and he won't have a dessert and he will have a healthy main course.

I am furious. We don't go out to eat very often. He eats a balanced diet, he is very active and this teacher is making him worried about going out for dinner? What the actual fuck?

I told him not to write it. And I said that I will write a note to the teacher explaining that we do not have good and bad foods in this house and making a 10 year old feel guilty about going out for dinner or fretting about what they are going to eat is unacceptable

The thing is, at 10, they eat what is provided, don't they?
I mean they don't do the shopping or meal planning or cooking. So they are now made the feel guilty about something they have no fucking control over anyway.
What is this supposed to achieve exactly?

The only change for life, government ad. I think had real use was the "Me sized portions" one!

After years of grumbling at DD2 for wasting food and wondering how she lived on fresh air, I realise her body knew what she need.

Suddenly, as a growing teen, who does lots of trampolining and gym, she has started eating enough for a person not a mouse.

I think some foods are bad for you actually, but I wouldn't get worked up about this. Just make something up. Or write the truth. It's a shit homework and the prize idea is silly.

Another consequences of the five a day is people see it like a quota. So it encourages people to think 'oh, I've had my five a day, I don't need to eat any more veg'. Brilliant thinking that!

I am sensitive about this.

Not because he is overweight because he isn't. He honestly isn't. He eats a...I don't even know the right word, a balanced diet I suppose.
I don't ban chocolate or cake or crisps, they eat stuff like that sometimes if it's on special offer in tescos and it's in the house.

I don't want food to be an issue. I don't want a 10 year old worrying that he is going to be unhealthy and overweight because he had a packet of crisps or a ham sandwich.

I think part of being healthy, which is what this appears to be about, is not just food but exercise and he is very active. I also think it's about knowing the difference between what your body needs and what it needs less of which is why he doesn't drink bloody Oreo milkshakes every day.
But I do t think he or it should be labelled "bad" for eating something that's not on that list.

And, sorry but the list is bollocks. It's not even close to being healthy.

Yeah I take MASSIVE issue with them putting sugar free squash on the "good" list too...it's pure filth that stuff.

I think you can not overreact though. Some stuff from schools has to be challenged and some dismissed as silliness. This is silly. This is the poor school having to be a "healthy school" and struggling because - wait for it - it is made up of teachers, not nutritionists. But somewhere in the school policy will be a directive about healthy eating.

The 5 a Day campaign was begun by a consortium of US companies. Ones who manufactured and sold fruit and vegetable products, and, um, pesticides/herbicides/fungicides. It's based on precisely no research and while extra fruit and especially veg is obviously a good thing, there's also no acknowledgement that all fruit and veg is not created equal and 2 portions of raisins, one of orange juice, some sweetcorn and some carrots isn't actually the healthiest regime, if eaten every day without variation. You need more veg than fruit, with a portion of green leafy every day, ideally. Just saying "five a day" doesn't do much IMO.

Funnily enough when I lived in Australia it was 7 a day.

The thing that bugs me about healthy eating guidance is it's so specific and micro-managed. Surely "eat a varied range of unprocessed food, especially good quality protein and veg of lots of colours, and try to eat green leafy veg every day, but don't worry about the odd treat because life is for living..." would be better? With maybe guidance on how the closer a food is to the way it's grown or bred, the healthier it's likely to be? The current stuff is so categorised and nit-picky that the overall message gets lost in minutiae and defining individual foods as "healthy" and "not healthy". And there's no acknowledgement that different people at different life stages need different nutrition, either.

The prize is absurd since the children don't have much control over what they eat (although more control than a 6yo).

The stupid Change4Life good/bad list isn't meaningful for growing children. I'd have a face about that.

I would be very tempted to do two - one crisps/pie/chips/sweets and one organic lentils.

When I looked after other people's children a gazillion years ago we used to talk about "everyday" foods and "sometimes" foods. Oreo milkshake is then labelled "sometimes" and not "bad".

I kind of see your point, tantrum, and to be honest there's no point in getting angry with the school because the school is merely reacting to the epidemic of apathetic parenting in the UK.

The overreach is at once irritating and understandable.

OP, I worry about children getting the wrong message, too. I know a 15-year-old boy who has stopped eating carbs because he thinks he is fat and it will help him lose weight

I just think the best way to counter this sort of homework is to do it, but have a discussion about what you as a family think is healthy and unhealthy. Challenging people's views - yes, even teachers' - should be encouraged!

That's exactly it horatia, everyday foods and sometimes foods.

"Bad" just makes it sound like something that should never pass your lips ever because it's so horrific.

When I looked after other people's children a gazillion years ago we used to talk about "everyday" foods and "sometimes" foods. Oreo milkshake is then labelled "sometimes" and not "bad".

That's brilliant and I am henceforth pinching it - thank you!

But how often is sometimes? A lot of the food advice is so hard to puzzle out. No wonder people give up. Treats for example. By which people mean sugar. Is daily okay? Weekly? Christmas and birthdays? We would all have a different vew of what sometimes meant? It's not a measurement. It's a value judgment.

rhonda one of my ds1 friends is like this, he's 15 as well.

A lot of the boys had a growth spurt and they are tall and skinny as rakes, he isn't. He isn't overweight, he does a lot of sport and he is very healthy.
But he bought into the "only eat low fat, calorie count, no carbs" thing that they teach, and he is very obsessive over it.
I don't like it. It's just the wrong message. All DCs aren't going to be the same size or shape and it seems counter productive to focus on food as the main way of having a healthy lifestyle.

ok op you say your ds is worried about the milkshake, a supposedly bad food.
he is worried about admitting to having it?

you know what to do,
lie
and tell him a little bit of what you fancy is good. everythign in moderation and all that.

I have a 10 yr old DS and he had the food diary to do last week, one day he had a chicken wrap for lunch at school and then a chicken wrap for dinner. I never realised that the school menu was a chicken wrap that day so I'm sure the teacher will be thinking that his diet is crap since he had the same thing twice.

Our school also started a points system for the healthiest snack! So now my DS doesn't take anything for some reason, I always tell him to take fruit but he goes without now which I'm not happy about.

What do teachers get told to do about health education? Do they have to do these exercises?

Do they get proper training in diet? Becoming a dietician involves serious study. When do they have time to do this?

And what happens with a teacher who has a poor diet and approach to health or bad issues with food?

Basically I'm asking whether teachers are happy to do this. Because I wouldn't be. I wouldn't feel qualified to dish out health advice and I wouldn't think it was my business either.

Teachers and schools get asked to solve just about every social problem affecting young people. Schools are where you can find lots of children and young people. So, nearly every government initiative about that age group will involve them.

Haven't read the thread but I completely agree with you, OP.

10 years old is the perfect age for sowing an eating disorder imo. Just when young boys and girls, in particular, are starting to become more aware of themselves and their bodies.

I'd tell them to mind their own fucking business and have no part of it.

How often is sometimes? Good question.

I suppose it would be reasonable to estimate that one ought not to eat sometimes foods every day, which in all honesty would help a lot. And then say not more than once in any single day. So if you've had chocolate cereal you then don't have crisps at lunchtime or chips at teatime (say).

And if you're planning a burger/milkshake/cake blowout later on, you plan to have porridge or scrambled egg for breakfast and a banana for your snack.

We mustn't let our children be afraid of food per se. Cutting out whole food groups (typically carbs or fat) just isn't going to be good for them unless a paed consultant has recommended it!

Then RTFT, kirjava because most posters are supporting challenging the idea of "good" and "bad" foods, but are not suggesting being rude or offensive to get the point across.

I'd support that too, but I see no reason why the teacher needs to see what my children eat, at home, away from school. It's intrusive.

You could say that about anything. Write an account of your weekend, what you did in the school holidays, interview a neighbour about living in the Blitz. There's nothing wrong with home life being part of homework. It's just this is a pointless homework and the prize makes it even sillier.

we had this in year two, though the children did it in class.
you could go for bamboozling the teacher with science! sure you could get a bit of help here. criticise the good and bad... explain that children need fat for fat soluble vitamins...

I've just been talking to DS about his homework and he's not worried about it - it seems their discussion in school has indeed been of the "too much X can be bad for you" rather than "X is bad".

He also knows some fat is good for you.

So - it doesn't have to be done in such a black and white way as the OP's example and I think you should challenge it Tantrums