aibu to think the school can get fucked telling me what i can and can't put in packups

[InTheWhiteRoom]

ds is 8

he came home with a letter saying his pack up today was inappropriate. it was a very patronising letter "we promote healthy eating" and all that shit.... i can only assume this is because as I put a marshmallow in his pack up. a SINGLE marshmallow. along with his sandwich (cheese salad on granary) 2 bits of fruit and a yoghurt.

aibu to think I am the parent and I decide what goes in lunches?

jeez anyone would think his pack up was a can of coke and a packet of biscuits.

Dh and I are so sick of the nanny state that has descended upon our school system. The entire food issue is one of the reasons we have decided to home educate next year. Having strangers dictate our child's diet is unacceptable to us.

Our school has a no cake, crisps, chocolate or sweets policy. I've questioned this on more than one occasion as being overly strict. DS is allergic to milk, eggs and nuts, and we've had issues in the past with over enthusiastic fibre consumption. This leaves us with a limited range of foods he can eat, and an upset little boy when the school dinner kids get cake and ice cream. We've agreed with his specific lunchtime supervisor (who is also his TA) that she will turn a blind eye to the occasional piece of cake, or handful of crisps - and he has both about once a week in his lunchbox. And FWIW DS is as skinny as they come, and very active.

That would give me the rage, Waxy. How can they possibly justify it?

I find it really sad how indignant and precious so many people on here are being. When did society start getting so obnoxious about parenting? One minute its all "oh but it takes a village to raise a child" which lasts right up until another person - in this case people who spend the majority of each day with your children - try and impose a GLOBAL rule that you get a bit pissy with. Then its the predictable "I will feed MY child what I want and YOU can fuck off."

truly sad.

If the school has rules about no sweets in a lunchbox then you broke that rule and frankly YOU are the one who should "deal with it". Its not a pointless rule - kids don't NEED sweets. Its no more pointless than "no jewelry" or "no crazy hair dye colours".

You could ask to speak with them to clarify what the specific problem was, and their rationale for a blanket rather than graduated ban.

At the end of the day THEIR SCHOOL THEIR RULES.

PS for most of this I'm using "you" as a general term not specific to any poster.

Pps, lots of people comparing sugar in yoghurt and fruit and the like to chocolate bars. That doesn't show a very good understanding of nutrition....

Well said Gouda

Just one marshmallow?

But what about the rank hypocrisy, Gouda? They are not imposing a GLOBAL rule. They are saying it's fine for the school to give the kids sugary crap for lunch and shower them with sweets as rewards, but not ok for the parents. How can it POSSIBLY be ok to ban cake in packed lunches, then merrily serve it in the school dinners? What possible reason can there be for that (other than cynical financial reasons, that is).

I don't think parents would be acting so 'precious' if schools were actually providing healthy school meals and leading by example. But most of them don't seem to be.

Oh and why do you think the sugar in yoghurt is different from the sugar in chocolate? Some yoghurt have a whopping amount of sugar in. And schools I've been in serve the cheapest, crappiest, most chemical - tasting yoghurt you can get. Because it's cheap.

SDT

The difference between the yogurt and chocolate is nutritional value.
A yogurt contains protein, calcium, vitamins A and D.
Whereas confectionary has nutritional value. Just yum value.

I also think there's a differnce between a pudding that might contain eggs, milk, fruit
And a chocolate biscuit or a marshmallow.
But the same rules should apply to packed lunches and school meals. So perhaps a cake (lunchbox pudding) that, especially if homemade, might have some degree of nutrient density, should be allowed whereas a bag of haribo?not so much.

Great post Gouda

Cheap yoghurts are full of artificial sweeteners and thickeners. In spite of the artificial sweeteners, many of these yoghurts also have twice as much sugar as protein. Usually about 7g protein and up to about 16 sugar. I'm not saying chocolate is good for you, but neither are these yoghurts. If you look at a decent chocolate, even milk chocolate, say Green and Blacks, it has way more sugar, but does have 9.8% protein too. And no artificial crap. Cakes etc have eggs and flour in, but they also have absolutely shedloads of sugar.

If a child has a balanced diet then there's nothing wrong with them having cake sometimes. But WHY do schools put stodgy sugary stuff on the menu most days while banning a marshmallow from a packed lunch?

Whatever. I was just trying to answer the question of what was the difference between the sugar in a yogurt and in a marshmallow/ confectionary. The answer is that a marshmallow is all sugar, whereas a yogurt had additional nutritional value.
Foods vary in their quality of ingredients. i dont think many children are packing organic confectionary in their Lunch boxes and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a thickener.
I have no problem with children having puddings. But sweets are different imo, They dnt fill them up and are usually comprised of entirely empty calories.

And I agree that the rules for packed lunches should be in line with the school meals.
A homemade "cake" might be quite a healthy food item in a balanced diet.
But a marshmallow or a kitkat is not.

'THEIR SCHOOL THEIR RULES'

'Great post, Gouda'.

Really? These are our schools. Community schools.

the school is there to teach not preach send a packet of crisps and choc biscuit next time

I'd reply saying the best way to stay 'on message' would seem to be to follow what the school THEMSELVES serve, so if they'd send you the weekly menu in advance, you'll send as similar as you can in packed lunches. Right, Monday will be chocolate pudding, Tuesday sponge cake with jam, Wednesday a choc chip cookie...

Make sure you clock how many times the vegetarian option / pizzas/ vegetables / salads on the school dinners menu involve the ubiquitous tinned bloody SWEETCORN. And watery cold teeny shards of the limpness of broccoli.

Once I took our local authority school meals provider at face value and took them up on their offer of contacting them with any questions. The person on the phone was hostile and uncommunicative despite me being as polite and diplomatic as I could be.

Telling a child off for having one sweet is not promoting healthy eating - it's wasting time and resources on following rules to the letter.

chocoluvva, I've still got the hostile and uninformative email I received from our LA meals provider when I politely queried what was in their puddings.

SomewhereIBelong I understand your point about keeping treats for home. I guess when I was a child, treats were never treats as such because I had them every day so they were a normal part of my diet. I didn't get given food as a reward and of course I wasn't allowed to eat loads of sweet things but I had them in moderation. Perhaps this is why I now find it very hard to function without chocolate as an adult and eat it more or less every day.

I think my parents didn't care what I ate as long as I ate something. I hated the texture of most food and I was a vegetarian as well (by my choice, not my parents') so that limited what I could have even more. I know if I'd had things taken away from me my parents would have been very upset.

I agree, Amanda. A friend was, ahem, vocal when her son's courgette cake was confiscated. She was told it was because they had to have "healthy snack" and a cereal bar would have been ok.

She's a parent governor. She insisted they change their wording. Home-made courgette cake is obviously vastly more nutritious than a cereal bar. Now they have "Fruit only" as their policy.

How bossy!