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?

I agree that it might not be down to school dinners. My daughter is also 7 and has school dinners. She is a bit taller than your DD (122cm), and about a stone lighter; pretty much bang on the 50th centile for bmi according to the nhs site. She is also constantly hungry (quite fussy and doesn't always easy all her school lunch, particularly tends to skip pudding), would graze all afternoon after school if I let her. She doesn't eat much fruit and veg and fills up on carbs, but stays for and at a healthy weight because of the amount of exercise she does. How active is your DD? That could have more of an impact on her weight than just 5 meals a week that are less healthy.

always makes me laugh how you're not allowed a flapjack or cake in a lunchbox, but you are on a school dinner plate. Go back to packed lunch if you want more control over what she's eating.

When you say she's put on weight lately, how dramatic has that been? Was she very skinny before, or has she gone from slightly overweight to more so?

How much exercise does she do? My DS eats a fair bit of stodge but burns it all off. Is she having stuff like sweet/fizzy drinks that are basically empty calories?

I would echo taking her to the GP. A lot of the foods you list are full of gluten and the symptoms you describe could be in line with coeliac disease (I am waiting to be tested at the moment - I find the more wheat I eat, the hungrier I feel later!). Switch to packed lunches if you feel it's better for her but also get her checked out.

Yes - go back to packed lunches. Yours sounds lovely.

I'd also speak to the GP about her excessive hunger and gorging till she makes herself sick. That is quite extreme.

Yeah - or just change back to packed lunches first and see what occurs.

I can't see how anyone can get fat eating school dinners, the portions are small.

Why look for any other explanation when you can just blame the school.
Dinners at our school are lovely and have everything you put in your lunches available at the extensive salad bar plus jacket potatoes etc. Fruit everyday including prepared dishes of fruit salad as a pudding option. Its hardly our fault if kids choose the unhealthiest choice and I can bet if the unhealthier choices were removed from the menu we would be accused of taking away the students freedom of choice. We give out stickers that say I've had fruit today etc to the students who make the healthier choices but I've come to the conclusion after reading lots of recent school bashing threads that we just can't win.

So are your meals are not crap white wheat and pudding heavy life? Our school meals are a disaster. They are shipped in, sat around and beige. White wheat almost daily for pudding and main. Even the meat and fish is reconstituted and processed. Children might think they are going for a healthy pudding option but even the yogurts are poor quality. It's very disappointing as the meals could be great.

OP... is your daughter accessing high fat/sugar foods from elsewhere? Friends - or their parents? Relatives? What does her dad feed her/give her? I'm wonder if, because he's determined to do he opposite of what you want, whether he truly believes what he thinks is best and acts accordingly but in secret perhaps?

I'm not claiming Ooooooooh that everything served is super healthy but healthy options are aplenty and actively encouraged and as a healthy diet supposedly allows most things in moderation I think we have it covered.
How many parents can honestly say that their children are never given any empty calories or stodge at home and how many honestly offer fresh fruit and veg with every meal. If thats what most claim then who do all the dozens of children that are queued in McDonald's after school everyday and at weekends belong to. Some will justify that by claiming its just a treat but then the same parent would start a thread in uproar about the reward of a chocolate button being given in a school.
Like I said before, schools can't seem to win and its mainly due to a lot of parents with double standards.

Dd is 5, she has also gained a noticeable amount of weight since starting school in September.

The lunches served are healthy enough, but every single day a stodgy pud is offered. Dd has also twigged if you eat the pud you still get given a piece of fruit to go outside with.

The same size trays are used for all pupils, Dd does not need to eat the same size portion as an 11 year old.

After Easter we will be switching to packed lunches.

"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."

Where's that then? Certainly not the case here in Wales, where not only is the food crap, but we have to pay for it.

In addition, the nursery children don't get to choose what they eat. It's chosen and plated for them. At some point between 9am and 12pm they're given milk and toast (with nasty margarine). They have lunch at 12pm. DD now comes home most days with her fruit pot uneaten as she's not hungry during afternoon playtime. This is really basic stuff, isn't it?!

The trouble with having the option of healthy food alongside less healthy crap that you acknowledge students are more likely to choose is that it's setting up children to develop bad eating habits (including pudding with lunch, wtf?) by leaving the choice up to them, knowing that their choices are not likely to be positive.

If indeed the kids are all lined up at fast food joints after school, even more reason to edit down the choices available so that children are likely to eat healthily while in a controlled environment, not just that it's an option for the virtuous.

OP wants to edit the choices available to her child so that only healthy options are available. Entirely sensible.

The problem is partly giving a choice because if there's a choice between chips or jacket potato, the chips will win with most

Schools have a huge responsibility to retrain and educate children about food and they fail hugely in this role. The schools could actually be pivotal in changing future adult eating/health habits. A schools role is to educate after all.

Children sitting lifeless in front of computer games and eating processed foods is only a recent thing and schools should be working harder against this tide.

There are many parents too who don't allow their kids to eat lots of junk and who are forced to provide packed lunches because schools cooked meals are so poor. I haven't actually met any parents with double standards. Most of the parents I know feed their kids well and have odd treats. It's not appropriate for school to be the main provider of treats.

As far as I can see, school meals are poor because if they were properly healthy, the uptake would be less and this in turn would effect finances. A school needs a huge majority to eat school meals to make financial sense. The empty calories are all about money!

If my child had school dinners five days a week, I wouldn't feel I could feed them treats at home because they would have already had their allocated amount of treats ('healthy' sugar filled yogurt, 'healthy' flapjack, 'healthy' icecream, constipation causing white wheat pizzas, 'healthy' white wheat cakes, 'healthy' white wheat pasta, 'healthy' low grade processed protein covered in white wheat and so on.

I have to say I can see your ex's POV. I get starving in the afternoon if I have a packed lunch! (And I'm not overweight!) I'm from a school of thought that says it's ok to give kids a stodgy meal for lunch. Chips and pizza every day would be bad, but to me one lot of chips a week is fine in the context of a generally healthy diet and active life. But if your daughter needs to lose weight I guess it would be easier to monitor portion sizes/healthiness with a packed lunch so YANBU to consider it.

However, I do think it sounds like there is a larger problem about relationship with food going on here and that's not necessarily solved or helped by making some foods bad and off-limits. I don't really know how getting children to lose weight works, it sounds like something you should talk to a GP over.

The meals are like this for all my 4 boys. We are based in the north east. I'm not sure if they are healthier elsewhere?

You could try cutting out the school dinners but be open minded to idea that may not be the cause.

Trying to get others food seems like a different sort of problem than just eating badly at lunchtime. Maybe she eats her friends' food at school.

I despair when I watch our kids tucking into 5 chips, some cold beans and something that could pass for either chicken or fish.

It was perfectly described by one of our Y6 a few years ago when writing about the school she wrote 'school dinners are delicious, I really like Thursday's when V makes the brown stuff'

Saying that, for kids who's parents can't afford packed lunches or think that a packet of biscuits and a can of coke is an acceptable lunch school dinners are a decent alternative.

She has about ten sweets and one packet of crisps once a week. She's gone from on the brink of being overweight to being overweight, driving to school over winter also contributing. She does lots of exercise.

Her breakfast is usually one slice of buttered toast and a piece of fruit, she has fruit for snack at school and meals like sausage, mash and veg, meatballs and carbonara for dinner were common before school dinners but have tried to reduce it to soup/a sandwich etc as I don't feel she needs two big cooked meals a day. She easily eats more than me and would eat a lot more if allowed to do so.

Oooooh - it is surely parents responsibility to educate children about food?

Well actually it's both the parents and schools responsibility to educate about food but in areas of deprivation,

What people put into their bodies effects their long term health. Surely teaching about good health, keeping fit and nourishment is a cornerstone of education and well being. The NHS have to deal with so many food related illnesses, it costs normal working people taxes.

Sorry meant to say that often in areas of deprivation, there will be a bigger issue with processed and takeaway foods