to be furious with the 'healthy eating' advice being given to primary age children?

[unlucky83]

DD2 (7) came home with a slip asking for permission to calculate their BMI and to contact the parents if there are any concerns. All part of a group coming into the school talking about healthy eating etc with them. In general I don't think it is a bad idea...

DD2 is 'normal to skinny', you can see her ribs - I have no concerns. She eats relatively well - I don't buy fizzy juice, biscuits, crisp etc -she gets them occasionally as treats. She gets junk food/take away at the most every 3 weeks or so. I don't buy ready meals etc. I do buy cereals but not the really high sugar ones (cocoa pops etc). The worst thing is she probably eats too much fruit (as in not enough veg) - she'll only eat carrots, peas and sweetcorn at the moment...
I don't buy anything that has been tampered with - so don't buy 'fat free' things, or no added sugar things. I don't buy yoghurt in tubes, cheese strings etc... We have real (block) butter but in moderation -I don't buy 'spreadable' and definitely not any 'healthy eating' spreads...I agree in principle with 'if your grandmother wouldn't recognise it don't eat it'

DP & I do have semi skimmed milk but I still give the DCs (eldest 13) mainly blue 'full fat' milk... over the years I have heard various bits of research that suggest that dairy fat may not be as bad for you as previously thought and may have some health benefits. Eg. a Harvard study basically found that people who didn't eat low fat dairy were less obese than those that did ...there was recent study linking the presence of diary fat to reduced risk of diabetes and of course all the stuff recently that fat may not be causing as many weight problems as sugar. It needs more research. If my DCs had were overweight I might rethink but at the moment I think they are fine with blue milk...
I had vaguely realised that the blue milk wasn't going down as fast as usual - DD2 makes her own cereal for breakfast and pours her own milk to drink. Then DD2 told me yesterday that I might as well stop buying it -she wasn't drinking it - it wasn't suitable for anyone over the age of 2! I was furious -it is one thing to get them to discuss things with their parents - and take some responsibility for themselves - but not to tell them what to do without parental input - especially if they DON'T have any weight issues.
Now I'm a bit - I had a bit of a rant and showed DD2 research online etc. This morning she said she can't wait for them to come into school - she is going to tell them they are wrong . (Partly I think because she was annoyed with them because apparently they wouldn't give her her number (BMI) - didn't tell any of them)
Just been talking with another parent in DDs class with an underweight child with food issues. Sees a paediatric dietician. (Refused to get them weighed - which is fair enough). At the moment they basically have to get calories in them anyway they can. That child has also told their parent they are not allowed to eat crisp and should only eat low fat food

In the whole of DD's school there are no obese children, maybe one or two slightly overweight - I do know that may not be the case everywhere .
So AIBU to think that they should not be telling a whole class - no matter what their weight - to eat 'healthily' ? And maybe encourage them to discuss their choices with their parent?

I would have a real problem at anyone giving my daughter any kind of food advice based on C4L, it's such rubbish and so obviously weighted towards processed food producers.

We do have treats, they are occasional and we work on an "everything in moderation" principle. There's no labelling of bad food, there are balanced choices.

And as for BMI, it was never designed to be something for which we should aim, it was created to be decriptive of the various body types across a spread of population. I give it absolutely no credence at all.

Yanbu. I remember dd1 coming home in year 4 refusing to eat cheese, yoghurts, blue milk or anything that was deemed 'unhealthy'. We battled with her for months to get her to eat properly, she was underweight anyway and still is.

She couldnt grasp the anything in moderation thing and i think the c4L leaflets are awful, they get binned in our house

When I went to NCT when pg with dd, the breast feeding counsellor said that the first milk is full fat and then you have more watery stuff. The full fat milk makes you feel full and the rest is hydration. If your diet contains little or no fat, you will feel hungry (and fill up on carbs?).

This obsession with cutting down on fats, particularly for children, is so utterly ignorant and stupid. You get kids who always feel hungry and who fill up on crap.

Just teach what a sensible diet is. Assume that most parents will provide decent nutrition, give sensible school meals based on that assumption, and then do something about the rest (I bet it's a minority) on an individual basis.

Yanbu.

My daughter goes to preschool in America (we are British). The list of 'healthy' snacks parents take in on a rota basis is a joke. It would make you weep. I queried the sugar content of the majority of it and was told that we had to cater for less adventurous children... And ironically they've just started with a group who come and tell them about healthy eating - but everything is either good or bad, no moderation involved at all.

Children don't need to drink milk at all once they are past weaning. Full fat or otherwise

Not read the entire thread, but I have never, ever knowingly eaten a low-fat product (apart from skimmed milk) in my life. Healthy eating should be about eating lots of fruit and vegetables, including chips on occasion, and as little processed food (eg. low-fat stuff) as possible.

Some children are naturally a bit overweight when small, but if they have a good diet and exercise there should be nothing to worry about. My dd was chubby as a child and now is super slim, without any food fads, I might add.

YANBU, my nephew recently came home from school talking about similar things and a letter stating from his bmi he is obese and he should partake in more exercise. You can see his ribs and he participates in various sporting activities 3x a week out of school. When dd starts school next year I'm going to refuse to sign any consent form to get her weighed or calculate bmi. It worries me as dd is very small for her age and although I give her a healthy balanced diet I often give her full fat milk, cheese, butter and yogurts to try and get more calories in her if she hasn't eaten much. I also worry about all the chemicals they put in some low fat foods such as spreads so don't use them. Bmi is irrelevant and very out of date imo.

And of course the logical conclusion of C4L and other such advice is that before the advent of food technology that enabled the creation of artificial foods, such as low-fat and/or artificially sweetened options, our diets were, by definition, unhealthy. The logical conclusion is that the natural foods available to us are, by definition, unhealthier than factory-produced alternatives.

OK.....

It's such a wonderful piece of logic, that, cardamomginger