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?

Jassy, Well the kids in my class talk enthusiastically about pudding so I take that as representative I guess.

I wonder how many of them would still have school dinners if there wasn't a pudding, no idea.

At our school the healthy substitutes include beetroot in the chocolate pudding.

It's all about moderation imo, no need to ban anything.

The nutritional guidance for school dinners is available online if you're interested in having an informed opinion.

Just looked up the DfE's School Food guidance, they state the lunch for primary aged children should contain 530kcal. That would be 1/3 of her daily need, adjust the rest of er diet to suit. Maybe check the school complies with this.

I've read the 2015 guidance/standards (which of course don't apply to all schools) - have you? It's hardly terribly confining and not what most folk would call 'healthy'.

I'm not surprised your students rave about the sweet empty calories. That doesn't mean it's good for them, or that it's forming positive habits to get them expecting pudding every day.

I'm not at all sure that those height and weight measurements are correct. My almost 6 year old (who is very petite - usually between 9th and 25th centiles, depending on growth spurts) is 111cms tall, so 112 for a 7 year old seems very short indeed. My 7 year old is 122cms tall - I think she's 50th centile for her height).

A child of 112cms who weighed 4st 7lbs would be in the 99th centile for weight - so very obese. That's not something that would have happened by switching from packed lunch to school dinner for 5 meals out of 21! If you can honestly say that she;s not over eating at home then I really think a trip to the GP is required. It's extremely unhealthy for a child to be that sort of weight compared to her height.

That's what I wonder, penguin, I have a 7yo, 117cm and 3 stone, quite short for 7 but normal weight. So yes, 112 and 4.5 stone would be very short and probably the heaviest in class. A girl becoming so very overweight from healthy in the 6-7 months on the school meals would ring all sorts of alarm bells at school and with the gp.

Jassy, well then it's lucky that school dinners only represent about 25% of a child's weekly nutritional intake.

For many children they are the healthiest meals they eat by a mile. Water, yoghurts, fresh fruit, fruit in puddings, salad and veg are only experienced in school. I dare say you're right and they could be better, but at what point do children stop wanting them and then they're no longer exposed to any positive influences?

For the rest of the school population, the lucky ones who eat healthily at home, I still maintain that the odd low sugar, small portion of pudding isn't going to cause any nutritional problems in itself.

Also, I can't remember who mentioned that very few children get offered fruit at every meal or rarely have snacks etc at home. Mine do!

At lunchtime and teatime, my children are all offered a piece of fruit. Rarely do they refuse it. If they are still hungry then they have the option of a yoghurt if they wish. They never eat pudding at home during the week and at the weekend it would only be offered rarely - if we had guests or something, or we went our for a meal together. Each child has a sweet box (Quality Street tub or equivalent) and into that goes treats from relatives, Christmas chocs/sweets, party bag contents etc. At the weekend they are allowed to choose three or four small sweets, or one 'big' one (like a Cadburys fudge). They get this once a day for each weekend day. By doing this (although our friends think us really strict and mean), our children are not eating loads of sweets or junk all the time and a treat is actually a treat.

Most of our meals at home include at least one vegetable, but usually two or three and the children will eat most of them although my youngest will only eat broccoli or red cabbage currently. My middle child is a naturally very healthy eater and doesn't like much sweet stuff. The other two would eat cake/chocolate until the cows came home if we let them, I expect!

We do make our children finish their plates if they want something else but don't make a huge fuss about it. If they don't want their fruit or yoghurt and want to leave the rest of their food then we let them. They understand that there won't be any other food until the next meal though!

"Just looked up the DfE's School Food guidance, they state the lunch for primary aged children should contain 530kcal."

I think that's an enormous lunch. I am a fully grown adult and would eat 1500 a day to maintain my weight.

You're presumably no longer growing though, wayfaring, 7yo girls need around 1500/day I think.

Do they really?!

Yep, all that growing must really take it out of them... I was amazed, too. Would have guessed 900 if asked before I looked it up

So a 7yo who weighs 1.5 times what she should clearly eats much more than that, as the op said she easily eats more than mum.

The ops child is size of average 5yo so i assume that would reduce calories a bit.
Im surprised as well. As surely that means some will need to eat more than as an adult if say they end up at 5 foot.

Maybe the reason we feel we could eat whatever we want until 20.

I had puddings at school (secondary) it wasnt a problem (sometimes seconds).
But we had chips only once a week.
Though at primary i used to have 2scoops mash and beans or cucumber sandwich.
I think the majority of kids are getting 1-2portions fruit or veg a day at home.
What is in these puddings then if low fat and sugar as flour itself is high calorie.
Is that the real reason they are saying the custard is soya. As long as the parents realise its in there - DD is allergic to soya but i wouldnt expect school custard to have it in.
I think a smaller portion of normal pudding would be better.

People on MN are very down on school dinners. I think they are a godsend. I made the DC have them even when they had to pay.

I am sure that some people do make very healthy, varied packed lunches but for my DC it would be cheese sandwich or ham sandwich every day plus a piece of fruit (largely for show in DS case)and a yoghurt due to their fussiness and my busyness.
From what I see of most of their friends they are not exactly paragons of healthy eating virtue either. Cheese strings and frubes only exist because of packed lunches surely.

At my kids school it tends to be pasta, baked potato, fish fingers, pizza, roast dinner, some kind of chicken dish on rotation. It's pretty much what I would feed them myself. Fruit and salad are available. DD eats them DS does not.

Yes there are puddings every day but not huge ones often its a biscuit or a flapjack. I am quite happy for them to have that. They never have midweek puddings at home just fruit and yoghurt. If they do eat two hot dinners it's not exactly huge amounts. Both of them (7 & 3) are normal weight, healthy active kids.

I actively think school dinners are good for them. It encourages them to eat sociably, use cutlery and try new stuff.
Also my less good reasons: it reduces my stress by not having to buy and make the lunches, remember them in the mornings and clear them out later and it depresses me less not to know that they haven't eaten most of it!

So you're blaming 5 meals out of 21 a week for your child's health issues?

For the rest of the school population, the lucky ones who eat healthily at home, I still maintain that the odd low sugar, small portion of pudding isn't going to cause any nutritional problems in itself.

I don't disagree. But every day isn't the 'odd portion' is it? And there is clearly something buggered up in expectations when adults and children don't think a meal is complete without a pudding or dessert in some form, or that a meal is 'joyless' without one.

I really dislike the idea that puddings are the incentive to get kids to eat school dinners, regardless of how nutritious or otherwise they are.

I think this is a part of British culture that I will never get, and I'm quite glad not to.

I agree with Mamadoc, I think the benefits of school dinners outweigh the downsides,
After our initial blip I find them invaluable now, with such a hectic home life (heavily pregnant Me, DP working all hours, 2 yr old, 8 yr old with A lot of SALT input and a 10yr old with a hugely time consuming medical need)
I love the fact I can know they've had at least one hot, filling meal a day and the puddings are a combo of either something small (cookie, muffin, fruit & yoghurt) or sometimes something stodgier (crumble & custard, steamed pudding) there is always veg and salad and fruit and water, they're both so active any extra calories soon gets burned off and it teaches them to sit with other people and to eat with table manners and to line up, take turns, eat socially and they do get a good variety of choices.

Enjoying a pudding is hardly unique to Britain Jassy.

The BBC have an article about school dinners in other countries here.

The comments are quite interesting too.

Yeah, five sweet treats over a week counts as 'an odd pudding' I think.

Oh dear, please don't invent things I didn't say - there is quite a gulf between enjoying puddings/dessert and expecting one every day or expecting something sweet with each meal, isn't there?

Five sweet treats with five school meals (so 100% of the meals the school is feeding them) plus whatever the kids are getting at home in terms of pudding/dessert does seem a wee but much, yes, but I think we have quite different frames of reference on this.

DD's school meals are excellent. The school has a large vegetable garden and the cook regularly picks veg/herbs from it to go in the meals.

The meals are varied - anything from schnitzla (Polish meatballs) and goulash, to more traditional roasts and stews. There is rarely chips and never fish fingers or chicken nuggets on offer!

But this really isn't about 5 meals a week. This is about a child who, if the quoted height/weighs figures are accurate, is clinically obese. That doesn't happen because of 6 months of school dinners; there is something more to this.

As a first port of call I would see your GP, and I really urge you to do this as they can give help and advice about safe weight loss/management in children. More importantly, they can test for possible causes such as Cushing's syndrome.

The school dinners my dd gets are fine. Not perfect but what is v the issue with sweetcorn (apart from the fact it's not that nice imo), It's perfectly nutritious.

Yes most of the time I cook again in the evening. There is nothing wrong with having 2 cooked meals a day and I often do.. Sandwiches and crisps (well eating too much) are what make people overweight, not 'cooked' food.

The puddings have no sugar in them. Dd says they are gross (and that the dinners are tiny).

OP you need proper advice from a dietician.

OP You need to take your child to the GP.

i'm so confused about school dinners :(

both my dc are tiny....
dc1 is almost 10, 22kg and 125cm
dc2 is almost 8, 20 kg and 110cm.

dc2 has school dinner as advised by the head teacher to help 'put weight on' - her actual words. the main is something like fish fingers, peas and square potatos, crumble and custard. has the extra piece of bread, the salad bar and the fruit.
no idea of the size of meal and i'm finding it hard to figure out the calorie content.

i'm debating whether a packed lunch or school dinner is more calorific - and so far have no idea.... in 6 months of school dinners 1 kg has been gained (as well as giving highly calorific meals at home).

any ideas what the school dinner calorie content is?

Noonoos, I think someone posted that there are about 530 calories in a primary school dinner, about a third of a child's recommended daily intake.

Jassy, you said that this is something about British culture that you don't understand, so I thought you might be interested in what other countries include in their school dinners. I wasn't aware of making anything up.

im not saying you were - I'm saying my culture is different. I'm not making that up, either.

You did, however, invent that I said enjoying a pudding was somehow uniquely British, which of course I didn't.