to ban DD from school dinners?

[AlmondAmy]

DD is 7 yo, 112cm tall and 4.5 stone. Before free school meals, she'd eat 8-)9 portions of fruit and veg per day and was always chirpy and active. Recently she's become lethargic, moody and irritable and has put weight on. She won't eat fruit/veg but is constantly complaining that she's hungry and trying to get her siblings food. She is greedy to the point of making herself sick from gorging on so much rubbish food at parties.

School dinners this week have included pizza, mash, bread and chocolate muffin, breaded fish, chips and flapjack and sausages, mash, bread and chocolate cake with custard. A packed lunch is typically a roast chicken wrap, couple squares of cheese, tomato, peppers, cucumber, carrots and hummus, strawberries and a biscuit.

School give out reward stickers for an empty plate, which I completely disagree with. DD is desperate to keep having school dinners but I think they're rubbish and affecting her weight and mood and want to go back to packed lunch everyday. ExH thinks I'm being cruel to deny her and says he'll ask school how to order them so my packed lunch goes to waste He says her weight is fine and a healthy appetite should be encouraged. I don't think practically salivating over other peoples food and asking for it despite just having had a meal is 'healthy' at all. AIBU?

School dinners are cheap shite.

I'm baffled that they're allowed.

That sounds like a load of crap. YANBU. Yuck. Stick to the healthy homemade options if you can.

As the resident parent you can override your exes "Plans" pack her a lunch and tell school that she is NOT to have school lunch. I don't think though that it can be just the school lunches which are to blame. one meal a day won't do that much damage OP. What else is she eating?

School dinners are rubbish. Naff white wheat, puddings, processed meat/fish, not enough fresh stuff.

Yanbu, turf out the processed shit in favour of a packed lunch BUT she may be at the age that she needs increased calories so allow extras

I can't understand how your ex can be so bloody unreasonable, knob xx

School meals are crap, we had an opportunity to sample some of the offerings at my daughter's school and they weren't very good/tasty.

yanbu.

ds only has them one day a week. that is the healthiest day, though still not good. prefer him to have more veggies and wholemeal bread that is more than just wholemeal on paper.

Its 5 days a week of stodge. It's not necessary to have two big main meals in one day.

the ingredients they use are without allergens eg the custard is made without using dairy products . the foods may sound like stodge to appeal to the kids but are redesigned to make them more wealthy .the nutritional content of school meals has to meet strict criteria and they are designed by dieticians.
laughing at how a wrap cheese tomato. chicken and peppers is good but a pizza is bad

ha ha healthy not wealthy

is constantly complaining that she's hungry and trying to get her siblings food. She is greedy to the point of making herself sick from gorging on so much rubbish food at parties

have you considered that she may have an underlying undiagnosed health condition? i agree the school lunches are hardly healthy or even appropriate but i wouldn't be so quick to blame the change in your dd entirely on them.

in your position i think i would switch back to pack lunches and allow 1 or maybe 2 school lunches during the week as a treat and so she can still share that experience with her peers....on the understanding that she practices healthy eating and exercise during the rest of the week. the art of compromise is much better in the long run - hopefully it will last well into her teen years and beyond

however, why not get the gp to check her blood work and have a chat with her as well? the lethargy could easily be down to a low iron count/anaemia and the mood/weight changes could point to a hormonal problem. i know of girls who started puberty as early as aged 8 so i wouldn't be too quick to write off your dd as just being 'greedy' and 'irritable'.

Alice. You need to read up more and look into what you call their strict nutritional code because actually on paper the vitamin requirements for school meals are pretty low. They claim to be designed by a nutritionalist but actually I don't know even one nutritionalist a would advise such an unhealthy low nutrition diet.

In reality school dinners are about cheap calories and economic production. More then that though, school dinners were originally just a political ploy. They were part of a ill thought out policy rushed through quickly as a vote winner.

Before rolling school dinners out, studies showed children from poorer families (children who would have been entitled to FSM) who ate school dinners, worked a couple of months ahead of their usual achievement. The studies showed little improvement academically in children from more wealthy families.

A better less money wasting policy would have been to continue with free school meals for the poorest, then set up tight regulations about packed lunches in order to improve the health/eating habits of the nation. A simple no junk rule might have been enough?

She would be much better off having good quality protein in her lunch box to keep her going.

Can you ask the school to give you're dd different stickers as the present ones are causing unhealthy problems. New stickers could say 'I had great table manners' or 'I used my knife and fork really well'

OP you are well aware that dd is seriously overweight, she is carrying around a stone of excess, 20% too much.

I would get her checked out by your doctor to rule out any medical issues and get the doctors support to reintroduce healthy eating. School lunches are cheap unhealthy rubbish.

A compromise would be having rubbish school dinners on a Friday only.

I'm trying to imagine what he fuck custard made without diary products is actually made of then. It can't be good.

Why is dairy considered an allergen? Everyone is allergic to something (unless the custard is just water, which would be vile).

My granddaughter has a dairy intolerance and we make custard using Soya milk. It is absolutely delicious. We also use it to make batter for pancakes and sausage toad.

It does sound as if your dd is overweight - ds1 is 7 and weighs about 4.5 stone but he's 130cm tall with dh's rugby-player build, wide shoulders, huge hands and feet etc.

cutting out on school meals is probably a good first step but I agree with a pp that one meal a day is unlikely to be responsible alone and her diet needs to be watched in other meals also.

Of course school meals contain allergens!

Back in 1950s/60s, when uptake of school dinners was close to universal, there wasn't an obesity crisis and from the menu you list the only item that didn't feature then was pizza.

It's also pretty unlikely that there is no fruit or vegetables anywhere in school lunches (and you say yourself you're only listing some of the items on the menu).

What is your DD eating over the whole day?

If her total intake is unlikely to account for her weight gain, then I'd get her hormones checked.

Even if we accept that school dinners are terrible it doesn't explain why your DD is always hungry, eats until she's sick, refuses fruit & veg and steals food.

Even the most calorific school meal wouldn't lead to weight gain in itself.

There's something else going on and you're not doing anyone any favours by pretending that giving her a packed lunch will sort out all of those problems.

I also think that the OP's description of her DD is concerning enough to warrant a GP visit. It's a doctor's call as to whether further investigation is required, or not.

The dinners do sound rubbish, but sudden weight gain and behaviour change is unlikely to be caused only by switching from packed lunches to school dinners, which after all account for only 5 meals a week out of 21!