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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

180 replies

TantrumsAndBalloons · 01/03/2014 09:07

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?

OP posts:
DameFanny · 01/03/2014 12:26

Yanbu. If we get anything like that (ds is also 10) I'll be sending the list back corrected in red pen, possibly with some sample ingredients lists to demonstrate why sugar free squash shouldn't be classed as a food, ditto cereal bars.

But then I'm stroppy and have time on my hands Grin

DinoSnores · 01/03/2014 12:26

I'm completely with you, Tantrums. As a specialist in obesity and diabetes, I would be writing My son is not taking part in this exercise because it is fundamentally misguided, nutritionally invalid and psychologically damaging. Please speak to me.' as someone else suggested earlier.

There are no good and bad foods, everything should be eaten in appropriate moderation.

MomentOfTruth · 01/03/2014 12:29

We had the same thing to do when the dcs were in Y3. Please write all the food you eat for a week.

Just as you I really didn't like the fact that the teacher then gave a 'note' to the different diets and singled out the 'worst' and the 'best' diet. None of these children would have been able to do anything about it as clearly at that age it's the parents who chose what to eat etc...
Having said that some of the lists were just Shock. Chocolate bard for breakfast, biscuits and a packet a crisps at lunch and a pizza in the evening. repeat everyday....

What really really annoys me is when they do that at school then have a day out at a museum or something and the teacher is eating a pile a of crap that would never pass the 'OK' according to the guidelines they are teaching..... And that the same teacher is 'amazed' at my dc's lunch because it was a salad with a fruit and they couldn't have been bothered to do that themselves....

capsium · 01/03/2014 12:32

Moment perhaps there were some 'ironic' diaries! Grin

capsium · 01/03/2014 12:33

I can imagine some people having a competition as to who could concoct the worse food diary....Grin

Mintyy · 01/03/2014 12:55

Yes, I would also be tempted to do that with a shocking food diary consisting of fried bread and KFC washed down with cider, etc, but the poor ds would presumably be in trouble for it! Its such a stupid, stupid idea.

capsium · 01/03/2014 13:01

I was thinking more the DC Mintyy. We used to wind some of our teachers up something rotten! 'Game for a giggle' we used to call it (Game for a laugh was on TV at the time.) Oh we were so juvenile funny...

mx5hairdresser · 01/03/2014 13:02

All this "lunchbox police" and "healthy schools" is fucking ridiculous. I am only 26 but when I was at school you could have virtually anything for hot dinners and dinnerladies didn't go round snouting in our lunchboxes trying to undermine our parents. I never saw any fat kids and never heard of any other kids having peanut "allergies". Wtf has happened to this country in the 10yrs since I left school!?

thornrose · 01/03/2014 13:10

I still remember dd having this homework a few years ago, thankfully without the added bonus of a prize.

She has health anxiety and if someone mentions that a food is bad or unhealthy she gets in a real state about it. She starts to analyse everything she eats and seeks reassurance all the time that it's ok.

It caused bloody mayhem in our house. Angry

TillyTellTale · 01/03/2014 13:22

mx5hairdresser

Dude, I'm only a few years older than you. There were plenty of chubby kids, and children with peanut allergies. There was absolutely no bloody need to put quotation marks around allergies.

You were a standard child who didn't pay much attention to other people's weight, or their dietary needs. That's fine. Didn't mean they weren't there, though.

HoratiaDrelincourt · 01/03/2014 13:54

Yeah, a lot of very little children used to die "choking" on peanuts. Or from "failure to thrive" on cows' milk products.

Good old days, eh?

perfectstorm · 01/03/2014 14:23

I never said that teachers were infallible, but this will be one part of a scheme of work. Looking at nutritional values, healthy diet etc.

When used correctly the food diary can be analysed and broken down in to the foods components.

Yes, it could. The problem is teachers are not dieticians, and in my son's school at least, the "healthy eating" guidance is actively wrong. Trying to unpick that with my son ("No, I won't buy margarine; butter is better for you. No, I won't buy half-fat cheese, growing people need fullfat and anyway, nice cheese from a farm is better for you than plastic cheese from a factory, which "half fat" is - we can buy cheese that isn't meant to have lots of fat in when you're bigger, anyway. Did they really? Oh dear, never mind nobody can know everything...") is a PITA. And the reality is that the head, who wrote the policy, is brilliant at her job partly because she is extremely strong minded and stubborn and absolutely dedicated to "her" kids. She hires superb teachers, she ensures amazing facilities, and she manages to stick to the National Curriculum while making school immense fun for the kids. I'm not about to go in and make a fuss over the "healthy eating" bollocks when the school is in so many ways an amazing blessing for my kids and I appreciate so much of what they do - and his class teacher in particular is IMO not just hard-working and dedicated, but genuinely gifted at what she does. But they are teaching my son food habits that are just, simply, bad. All under the banner of "healthy eating". And I find that hugely frustrating.

If the government want to tackle diet and obesity at school, I don't actually have any issue with that. But they need to do it properly - employ dieticians to work out how, in an evidence-based way, and then offer good advice and resources to the schools. This is not happening.

TillyTellTale · 01/03/2014 15:05

Back in the 1990s, newspapers used to run articles complaining that these new-fangled allergies hadn't been around in their schooldays! I remember reading these articles and thinking, 'Has it ever occurred to these journalists/outraged letter writers that the much higher infant mortality rate back then and the lack of allergic school peers might be connected?'

Obviously, I took it for granted that they were right about the lack of allergic peers, rather than unobservant. Perhaps I shouldn't have!

namechangejustforthisone · 01/03/2014 15:19

YANBU. I wouldn't do the homework, and I'd make an appointment with the teacher to explain why, with lots of evidence based references as to why this approach is damaging, and misguided. They'd hate me and think i was a PITA. I couldn't care less.

Essiebee · 01/03/2014 16:18

I wish more parents got cross about this; I hated having to set it for homework as a teacher, as I thought it was extremely intrusive and patronising. There is no such thing as bad food, only bad diet, quote, Doctor on Woman's Hour, when Jamie Oliver was making such a fuss about chips. Mind you, I did enjoy the creative spellings of Spaghetti Bolognaise

Seff · 01/03/2014 17:24

Shocked that so many people think it's acceptable yo be teaching children to lie about the food they eat, particularly the so called "bad" food.

AgaPanthers · 01/03/2014 18:34

The only kind of reduced fat product suitable for children is semiskimmed milk.

Threetofour · 01/03/2014 18:58

YANBU I HATE the way kids are taught about diet & nutrition my 3 year old told me that she can't eat pasties or pizza as they are bad, a lot if my adult life has been bl

Threetofour · 01/03/2014 18:59

Sorry
Blighted by eating disorders & I'll be fucked if in going to pass that on to my kids

Blueberry234 · 01/03/2014 19:03

IIRC full fat milk is technically a low fat product as well as it is

Waltonswatcher1 · 01/03/2014 19:34

You laugh it off and make it all up . Tis ridiculous .
Children have never eaten as badly and we have never before talked about it so much . Seems to me school interference is not helping much .
The packed lunch police need to stand guard at the checkout and speak directly to the parents who buy nowt all but crap . The kids should be educated not hassled.
Cookery lessons and school vege gardens for example .

ShabbyChic8 · 01/03/2014 19:41

One of the biggest problems is that new initiatives come in to schools with very little or no training for teachers. As a teacher, I teach from my personal sphere of knowledge and experience, as does every other teacher. That means that there is huge room for personal interpretation, and misinterpretation. As a recovered anorexic I have a good understanding of the things that are important to teach children e.g. All things in moderation, but I know that other teachers would not be so thoughtful. I don't know what the answer is but training for teachers and a united stance would help. That united stance should be one of promoting healthy choices whilst also enjoying a little bit of everything, unfortunately what I think we're promoting at the moment is anxiety!

splashingingumboots · 01/03/2014 19:59

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

AgaPanthers · 01/03/2014 20:10

You don't need reduced fat cheese or low-sugar squash. If you want reduced fat cheese choose a traditional lower fat cheese (cottage cheese for example) instead rather than a mucked about with one.

And rather than sugar-free squash, learn to drink water.

Of the bad foods:

" Crisps. Chocolate. Cakes. Processed foods. Chips. Butter. Salty foods ie bacon, ham, or any other processed meats. Oil(?) ice cream. Cream. White bread. White pasta/rice."

My children eat butter every day. Oil is essential for cooking with. Nothing wrong with ice cream.

White pasta and rice are a good source of energy, and white rice in particular is a staple food for several billion people, and certainly not 'bad'.

Objection · 02/03/2014 20:05

WIBU to send my taxi receipt to Odeon and ask them to pay it?

I went to the Odeon at Whitleys today with my charges and twisted my ankle. There is a weird little ridge on the floor. like a tiny tiny step - no more than an inch high.

It runs the length of the wide hall and tbh I'm not sure why the floor isn't just gradually sloped Confused

I was stood near it, not realising it was there, and slipped off it when I turned - twisting my ankle quite badly. It's now swollen and bruised.

I struggled to walk to the tube station (about 3/4 of a mile) so flagged a cab to take me to St Pancras. The taxi driver wrote me a receipt and advised that I send it to the centre asking that the pay for it.

I don't want to sue, that'd be ridiculous and petty and I don't think I even have a case! But the taxi cost me £24 which I wouldn't normally have to take.

WIBU to take the taxi drivers advise and send it to them?