aibu to think school shouldnt serve unhealthy pudding every day!

[anothervisittothepark]

Just been looking at menu. My ds starts school lunches next week.
Every day has a sweet pudding. Like cupcake. Or choc sponge and custard. Theyalways have fruit and yogurt too. But i can guarantee ds will take cake every time given the option! You would think they would have a couple of days with only healthy puddings?
My ds doesnt have a very good stop button. And while he is not overweight i do have to often say no to him and insist he has fruit etc. I cant see it a very good thing giving them cake every day!

My two fusspots wouldn't touch the school dinners. Packed lunches work just fine. As for pudding/treat, i don't think its as bad as this mass anti-sugar hysteria.

this thread is showing up a lot of the problem. A few facts:

sugar is simple carbohydrate and is found in fruit as well as sweets and cakes. Difference is that fruit offers other nutrients.
cereal bars have more sugar than chocolate bars. NEVER Buy anything marketed as 'healthy'.
complex carbohydrates are essential for energy and growth.

There is always a choice of fruit so I think yabu as it teaches them to choose the healthy thing if they want and that fruit is as nice.

Cake is fine to eat. It shouldn't be demonised because that will turn it into some taboo that makes it even more desirable and in later life can definitely lead to issues such as binge eating. A balanced diet means a tiny bit of shit as well be that cake, ice cream, chocolate. Basically stuff that provides little to no nutritional value but does make even the biggest sourpuss smile.

However once a day is too much. It's definitely something to be reserved for once to twice a week maximum IMO. That doesn't mean it should always be on a certain day or viewed as a 'treat' either. It should just be 'oh and we're having cake tonight kids' as if it's just a normal thing to eat like spaghetti iykwim, no big deal made. That's the healthiest way to approach shit IMO.

I'm concerned schools are still offering this junk... I thought it was all fixed after Jamie waded in in his size nines (that's a guess, I don't know his actual shoe size ). Reduced sugar isn't always great, sometimes means chemicals as in diet sodas. May not be the case here but worth noting. I don't see the need for cake on the menu every day reduced sugar or otherwise. I wouldn't have cake every day because I know cake= saturated fats, refined flour and sugar and just generally isn't good for my health. So why would I give a growing child it every day? Don't understand the logic. Should just be fruit for dessert every day bar one day which isn't always the same day every week so it's not like "yes! It's Wednesday, that means cake!".

I don't know how we survived school dinners if I'm honest. Ours were atrocious. I remember a lot of chips, burgers, pizza and chocolate sponge cake. Thank god for Jamie eh.

Our school meals are excellent. Chips appear twice on the 4 week plan and everything is cooked on site. The vegetarian meals great with good variety although only available as a pre ordered vegetarian choice. Our whole council area have the same menu and lots of the food is sourced locally. However none of the schools in our area are huge and I can't start to think what it must be like catering for schools with 3 or 4 classes in each year.

They do have pudding each day (in winter it is soup and a main course instead of pudding 2 days a week). There is a homemade cake type thing a couple of times a week the other days are fresh fruit salad, ice cream and fruit, frozen yogurt, jelly and cream. Ds knows he gets a pudding at school or sometimes if we eat out (although he is usually too full) but because we don't have puddings at home he doesn't expect it at any other time.

I've eaten school dinners for many years as a child and as an adult in umpteen different schools. The portions are far from gluttonous, and carbohydrates are more important in children's nutrition than in adults.

Puddings in schools long pre-date concerns about obesity in children.

I would love it if they served cake to my dc all week. They seem to only serve fruit at school and dc could do with putting on some weight as is as skinny as a rake.

I dont like to form a habit in young children that cake and pudding is an every day occurrence as opposed to special.

This.

And as for arguing that it's part of a balanced diet, and actually they're REEEEEEELLY healthy and low sugar, probably tonnes of hidden veggies too!

Well fuck that.

When do I get to provide a lovely pudding for my DD, if she's shovelling this stuff in every day? I do honestly believe two proper puddings is too much in a day. Hell, I feel that once a week is more like it for a proper pudding- and preferably after a really good bike ride or something, to work up an appetite and help burn it off.

ALSO- I believe that apple crumble should have sugar in it. I believe that cake should be made with real food like flour, butter, sugar, eggs, not beirdy-weirdy low sugar low fat chemical filled nonsense. It's cake, for fuck's sake, not a healthy option. It should be a full on calorie filled flavour fest, preferably with sprinkles. And it should therefore be a once a week treat at the most, because if you're eating that sort of thing regularly you're sure as hell going to put weight on unless you're some kind of weightlifter or something.

AND; hidden veg??? Bullshit. Veg is savoury and delicious. You shouldn't be smuggling it into food for children, because they are going to grow up and need to learn to eat their bloody greens through choice, not subterfuge.

Hmmmm - first day of free school meals for my reception aged son. (Oxfordshire county council). On the menu - fish fingers and chips, ice cream and orange. Apparently there was no orange on offer and the fish fingers fell apart. So he ate chips and ice cream. Nick Clegg take note - this is not a healthy meal. There is hardly any fruit on his menu (the rare occasion it is on there it is 'fruit with jelly). Not impressed so far.

My classroom is right next to the kitchen. I was being tortured yesterday morning by the delicious smell of garlic bread wafting through the windows. The cook said she'd save me a bit.

Got all excited until I went to claim my piece. "Well, it's not really garlic bread, as we're not allowed to use butter. It's infused." She then produced a soggy misshapen lump of home-made bread, with green flecks of something-or-other sprinkled on it. Could taste no garlic at all.

Pah!

Also: balanced? I'm not so sure about that.

Today DD had: pizza, pasta, baked beans, and 'dry bread'. Chocolate sponge and chocolate sauce for pudding.

Mmmm, carby. Sounds like cheap filling stodge to me.

Unsurprisingly, after four days of this sort of stuff, she is constipated....

Loved school dinners esp the puddings when I was a kid. Most of the people moaning on here will have had puddings every day for school lunch too.

I am happy for my DC to have the puddings and shock horror chips if he wants. Fwiw he loves veg and often has the fruit option anyway. He is also very skinny. So if there are fat children (and I haven't seen any in his class actually) don't penalise my child for it. I would not be supporting this kind of campaign at all.

yanbu. I don't think it's a good thing for children to get used to having pudding every day.

I was skinny as a child. I was very active as a child. I ate regular puddings etc as a child.

Those eating habits are probably what led to be becoming an obese and having to fight very hard to change it and regain control.

Just because someone is a skinny child shouldn't make it a free licence to eat whatever you want. Offering children cake 5 days out of 7 at least PLUS less than desirable meals in school a lot of the time is not a good way of encouraging good eating habits.

What happened to old fashioned puddings like we used to have? When I was at school we had jam rolybpoly that was so heavy it could sink a ship, frogspawn (aka semolina) and custard with the skin on. To this day, I still can't eat custard. Should these be the kind of desserts our kids get? It would put them off 'sweet' things for life

yabu. dd chooses to have fruit for pudding or sometimes nothing as she would rather play after mains.

She is never amazingly full when she comes home. It's all a load of English 'cant eat two cooked meals in a day bollocks'.

and effin that's pretty much how dd reacts to them

In the 70's we had school puddings every day. Manchester tart, chocolate sponge with chocolate custard, almond sponge with green (pistachio ?) custard, treacle pudding, ginger pudding, chocolate rice crispie cake with weird shaving foam squirted on it...
It was marvellous, certainly not sugar free but there was no obesity problem.

I loved school dinner puddings - crumble, sponges, chocolate custard, pink custard...

Well, in a different vein to most people it seems, I always serve two courses - I don't think of it as mains and pudding, just savoury and sweet.

Sweet is usually fruit but sometimes fruit with something - strawberries with a small amount of clotted cream in summer, bananas and custard in winter. Or a small amount of cake, or fruit and ice cream, or jelly.

It certainly isn't a reward, it's just, as I say, two courses.

I am on slimming world, was a size 20 but i am now a 14. < toots my horn> I have not changed much of my diet at all.

I think how things are cooked is a major eye opener.

i can have burgers because i now buy super lean mince meat and make my own using sins for the bun. because i use herbs and spices I don't need sauce.

Carrie74 is exactly right. DC need more exercise. Losing afternoon break in juniors is a real crime!

Even if they don't get enough exercise DCs still need proper sugar and far containing puddings at lunch, because they need to concentrate in the afternoon and not arrive home starving.

I do not want a child winging all the way home for a snack. If I gave in DD 2 wasted most of her tea. If I stood firm I got a headache.

Well done piper!

I don't think children need puddings, however I knew lots of people at school who are still good friends now who had school meals with puddings and non of them have weight issues.

I think portion sizes are an issue, although I can't comment on schools portions as I don't know. So many people's idea of portion sizing seems to be way off. If you go out for meals etc lots of places seem to do huge portions

Also lack of exercise

The difference nowadays between when I was at school eating pudding every day (jelly with piped cream on top and a sugared jelly sweet in the centre of the cream) are:
Packages foods
Obsession with food issues
I think it is better to have something "proper" and more stodgy ie homemade shephards pie than a low fat ready meal.