To believe we've forgotten how to eat healthily

[Yoruba]

I'm so completely fed up of the school serving up so much rubbish, with seemingly no understanding that its unhealthy. It is really really hard to find good evidenced advice about healthy eating for children. There seem to be contradictory reports coming out all the time, and I say that as someone who is really interested in this subject so it must be harder if you don't.

The school meals are utter rubbish. They have a sugary rubbishy pudding every day, sweets at every possible occasion and now they have seen fit to start selling ice creams after school to raise money.
Im not even THAT strict I don't think, I'm happy for her to have these foods but evidence shows that eating them regularly alters your taste buds and makes you crave them more. I think they should be occasional foods we eat as PART of a healthy diet, not every day.

But at the moment I'm feeling like a lone voice and I hate dd feeling like she's missing out in not having what her friends are. I don't want these things to be "forbidden" objects of desire.

It just seems as though there is very little knowledge now of what is actually healthy for children.

I dislike all this talking about eating , it's over cooking the egg and is breeding a fear of food in young people.

It just isn't difficult - feed your kids good grub and don't buy shit . Teach them to enjoy new foods and cooking .

I have a 14 , 11 and 2 year old . We have 1 vege 1 vegan 1allergy riddled and 2 meat lovers in our house .
Meals are always cooked freshly and we eat together . My kids eat anything . If they don't they starve .

It isn't hard .

I'm not sure that cheap or even convenient should be the main considerations when feeding kids.

Great, I am sure they will love your offer to cater for them all next time they go!

TinyLL I'm surprised that those small changes would have changed so much in your eyes. I was expecting something more radical.

It's great that your child would have eaten fruit and wholemeal bread on offer. DC most likely would have ignored those options. As an organiser, it would have gutted me to see food go to waste if a lot of kids were like DC.
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Oh dear, I think some of my DC would resolve to never go on any trip ever again if WaltonsW did the catering.

If you don't have a cupboard full of chocolate children will learn to love the taste of a punnet of strawberries (delicious and cheap at the moment).

DS2 & DD used to come to fisticuffs over punnets of raspberries & strawberries. The fruit was handed over delicately & happily to the victor by DS3.

No way on earth would DS3 ever taste a berry, though (sigh).

Most children will like the taste of some fruit though. Ds2 eats tonnes of bananas whereas DS1 hates them. He likes pears, which DS2 won't touch

They eat lots of crap too but I'm trying to get a reasonable balance. Neither are overweight thankfully.

DS2 has never liked the taste of a strawberry- he didn't as a child and he doesn't as an adult- he didn't 'learn to like it' even if there was nothing else. We are all different.

I don't think anything to do with school dinners is habit forming. At school maybe but they are able to separate home and school. dd is always a bit about school dinners, she eats them but then praises my cooking (even though she doesn't get cake after and we often don't have anything for pudding, even fruit).

I think people need to relax.

I don't think that we have 'forgotten' how to eat healthily, we have never known in the first place.
I read a book about the history of food, cooking, meals etc and it was a revelation. For example the poor in Victorian England had a terrible diet, they couldn't cook from scratch because they couldn't afford saucepans etc. The pie shops were very popular and you really would not want to know what went into the pies!
Eating is supposed to be enjoyable and sociable and somehow you have to bridge the gap between that and health.
You can control your child's diet when they are young but you have to get them enjoying and preferring it or they will see the forbidden foods as highly desirable and something to have as soon as they are out of sight or have the money and independence.
The easiest thing is portion size- we generally have much bigger portions these days and yet we do less exercise.
Cooking from scratch with natural ingredients is not so easy if busy but the healthy way.
Eat lots of vegetables and fruit.
Eating with the children, or at least the same as the children. They will always do as you do and not as you say. If you have a chocolate biscuit and give them a rice cake the only message is that chocolate biscuits are nicer.
You can cut out snacks and get the body used to feeling hungry at meal times. If you feel a snack is essential you can have an unprocessed one.
You do not need the unnecessary calories from sugary drinks. Water is fine. I am astounded at the people so anti water! Someone will pick on my post soon and say 'bollocks to the water'. I would love to know their alternative on a hot day if they won't drink it.
Labelling food 'good' or 'bad' to a child is counter productive. If you have a balanced diet most of the time you do not need to get all upset about an odd visit to MacDonalds or a birthday child's packet of sweets.
Make sure that you get plenty of exercise- walk as much as possible.

There are some good points on this thread. Even some I hadnt thought of myself at my age, and probably should have.

I wonder. Are different school meals served in different counties. fwiw, ours used to be much like Worra's. But I am talking about a few years ago, but not that many.

I did notice though, that even then there was a huge momentum on learning about healthy eating, but not as big a momentum on actually sticking to it at school! Not that I would have absolutely definitely wanted them to, but purely by reading mumset, the whole situation does seem to have got worse.
Ice cream vans for instance outside school each day should be banned imo. No need for that whatsoever.

The other point that strikes me, that hasnt been mentioned much, and I have seen this written on a couple of other threads, is that I do think that we have lost sight a bit of what constitutes a healthy weight.
And I include myself in this.
My husband has been trying to lose some weight recently.
Originally I did think that probably he needed to lost about a stone. He has lost about 3/4 a stone so far. All well and good. But quite frankly, we can now see that really he needs to lost 2 stone in total, not 1. Which has slightly shocked and surprised me tbh.

There is no need for a lot of things should we ban all of them?

FWIW we had an ice cream van park at our secondary school every lunch time, because it was there every day the novelty soon wore off for most people and it was very much an occasional thing.

Walton. It isnt that hard if people have money to buy a large choice of food. And if you kids will eat a wide variety of things. Getting them to is the hard part.

I bet that the novelty has not warn off for all of them Sirzy!
And temptation is there. Would be for me anyway. I love icecream.

like i said does that mean we have to remove everything that is tempting? Bloody hell I could eat baguettes until they are coming out of my ears should we ban them from being served in school canteens?

I think we've actually forgotten how to exercise enough.
from bronya.

I do think that is true of some adults. And again, I very much include myself in that. Personally I think that I am someone who prefers to exercies socially. But I live lets say very rurally, so it would be quite a drive in a car realistically to find groups who want to regularly exercise. Which is a bit of a faff, and rather defeats the object.
I said on another thread that I would like breakfast tv group exercise brought back. I think I would be one who joined in.
Anyone know if there is a tv channel somewhere that does that?

In schools I think that we should. The obvious stuff. Yes.
Personally I hide certain foods in my house sometimes, and have weeks where I just dont buy them, so they are not around.
I realised some time ago, that I can be tempted quite easily if yummy unhealthy stuff is staring at me.

I think that I am far from alone in this?

The OP is referring to school dinners I think and the fact that they get a pudding that contains sugar every day.

I think schools have strict guidelines on nutrition that have been carefully thought through. They are only allowed a small amount of sugar. There isn't much sugar in school puddings anyway, perhaps a spoon or two per portion.

There is a case for removing all sugar from meals but this would mean no pudding at all. They can have fruit instead I guess.

I think they are far healthier than packed lunches and teach a good attitude to food, that it is about sharing to provide what everyone needs as opposed to taking in just what you want. It is a lesson in caring, compromise and sharing. For this reason I think packed lunch should be banned.

But you could go on forever trying to ban 'bad' foods and would lead to a very limited availability.

We shouldn't need to hide foods, we should be teaching children about moderation and that includes knowing that there is chocolate around but it doesn't need to be eaten straight away or all at once.

You are never going to have a healthy diet if you have to remove temptation! You have to learn not to give into it.

Children have to develop self discipline otherwise they are not going to manage a healthy diet as adults.

There seem to be a lot of adults who can't control their own diet but can control their child's diet. Another waste of time- it is what you do that is the example that they follow.

I don't think yabu at all op

My kids eat so called "crap" mixed in with healthy meals. They get cake and chocolate and sweets. Not frequently but not so sparingly that it's all demonised and ergo something they want all the time.

My dd used to have school meals. She is one of "those" children half of you don't believe exist, in that one main meal a day is all she will eat, so it's not a case of making they short falls up at home when your restricted to breakfast and a sandwhich.

The dinners were awful. They may have been techinicLly balanced but the meats are always cheap (probably injected with water or reformed or whatever) lots of rice/pasta/mash potato, and veg that was doggy and inedible.

How do you get children to eat shitty soggy over cooked swimming in water veg?

She was living off bread and the cake. Always cake/flapjack and custard.

Healthy it was not.

Soggy not doggy

I think the issue is probably down to money. With so many mouths to feed and many schools having it brought in, naturally it's going to be cheap, poor quality meat, and frozen stuff. Fitting the requirements and very low standards on paper but let's face it, the reality is that it's a carb heavy, bland, heavily processed meal.