To think this food tech teacher is wrong?

[MagentaSpunkTrumpet]

DS is yr7 and currently doing a block of food tech lessons. I've just found a list of ingredients for this week which includes "low fat soft cheese (low fat only!)"

AIBU to think that yr7 children should not be being steamrollered into using low fat options? As a family we are fortunate to have good health and metabolisms so we are able to eat well while avoiding all need for such things ie- we use full fat milk, real butter etc.

I therefore will need to specifically buy low fat soft cheese which, in itself is not a problem (I also have to buy bread mix when I would always make bread from scratch) but it sits uneasily with me that DS is being taught that low fat is inherently "better".

I may well be being unreasonable and will probably stick the regular stuff in a pot and trust that the teacher will be none the wiser but on the other hand, I'm wary of becoming "that mother"

Eating well and teaching kids how to approach food is really, really important. I'd be a bit hmm about this teacher's approach, yes.

Yup, they're gonna learn that from a course of food tech lessons in Y7. Not from the 2-3 meals a day they eat in your house, 365 days a year, for 18 years.

But merry, for some children their food tech lessons will be the first time they are really able to engage with their food and its preparation.

For DS that's not the case but it absolutely was for me. That's probably why I'm a bit PollyAnnaish about this but it just seems like a bad lesson to be giving out.

I bet he is in a group together with another couple of pupils and they have wanted low fat cheese and tinned tomatoes. I'd buy it amd leave them to it, if I were you. Yes, it will be disgusting, but trying out different combinations amd finding out what does and doesn't work is an important part of learning to cook.

But merry, for some children their food tech lessons will be the first time they are really able to engage with their food and its preparation.

Which is exactly why approaching it in the way some people on here are suggesting is counter productive.

You don't sit down a child who can't write his own name and ask him to write a sonnet. By the same token it would be counterproductive to ask a child brought up on chicken nuggets and oven chips to make a mozzarella pizza from scratch, dough and all.

A lot of people on this three seem to be assuming that all year 7s should be assumed to be middle class children with foodie parents. In reality they won't all be, and the ones who aren't are probably the most important for the lessons to reach. And those children would probably be entirely alienated by being asked to cook a pizza from absolute scratch with mozzarella etc, etc in a year 7 lesson. They'd write cooking off as something too difficult and complicated and those who need the lessons most would stop engaging.

Shove you are wrong but the whole 'nutrition industry' is too. As a a nation our massive weight gain is to do with inactivity and sugar, not fat.

I don't understand apocalypse (This is probably my own fault)

Here are my assumptions! Critique away and tell me where I am wrong!

Weight gain is about calories, right, which are just a measure of energy? You eat more calories than you burn, and you get fat. You eat fewer calories than you burn, and you lose weight. Fat has loadsa calories in it. Sugar has loadsa calories in it. Put together a fast food diet that is high in both, and you have a recipe for weight gain! (But, to be honest, if we all ate loads of bananas a day, to make a calorie intake greater than we burned, we'd gain weight, right? It's just it would be pretty hard not to get sick of bananas before that point).

a load of middle class mummies demanding their latest food fad is catered to

Nah. You're trying to make a point but there are no examples of what you're claiming on this thread. This is not about kids 'not raised on avocados and rosemary foccacia.'

It's actually the opposite.

They're teaching novice cooks how to make simple food within a limited time frame

Seriously, what is simpler than bread?

Learning to make bread is the very definition of easy, basic and what everyone eats.

I'd love to know what's faddy about saying no to low-fat (the ultimate in faddiness) and baking bread.

You have no idea why the tech teacher asked for low fat and yet you've assumed the worst.

I have to say, I agree with BillSykesDog.

Make the teacher's day ; complain about this

Put it in an unmarked tub and say nowt.

one of the big commercial serial-failed-diet companies thinks low-fat is better. They will recommend low-fat versions of stuff which have MORE calories than the full-fat versions. Obviously this makes sense for their business model, but surely a teacher should be able to over-ride managerial stupidity like this?

BTW what is the difference between food tech and cookery?

Yeast and olive oil are hardly expensive, but wouldn't it be much better for pupils to be given the choice to take in money for ingredients, rather than everyone in the class having to bring in something that they may not have and not use the entire pack of?

So they can either bring a sachet of yeast if they have one, or 10 pence or whatever it is if they don't. Similarly for flour, salt etc. The ingredients for a pizza base will cost about 50 pence if that so it seems daft for all these bags of flour to be bought if people don't make pizza at home.

But what needs to be addressed is why we see basic cookery and things like yeast and olive oil as aspirational and middle class in the UK when being able to cook and feed oneself and family out of basic and cheap ingredients is something that can massively increase quality of life. So if we have parents that don't know how to cook, maybe we need to teach the skills in school, including making pizza out of basic ingredients as well as, or preferably instead of bread mix.

They could compare and contrast cost, ingredients, time, nutrition and taste etc for educational purposes too.

Scaredycat3000
"If it came from the teacher it will be from the departments scheme of work, this term that's what you're teaching. D&T departments have metalwork, woodwork, textile, and cookery teachers. For yr 7 most likely they will all be teaching all subjects, even if they can't boil an egg or hold a saw properly. It's so much fun to be support to this, not! I also briefly worked in a private school and there wasn't a single food teacher despite them teaching food confused and they couldn't tell me why Trex was the fat used in the cookies. It wouldn't surprise me if your teacher had no idea why low fat ether. And then probably bizarre Government interfering"

generalising and patronising in one post, well done.

Right, we've got to the bottom of the mystery. Brace yourselves....

Wednesday's lesson will be an assessment based on what they've done over the past term. So DS has elected to make bread based pizza but as a calzone for extra credit. The low fat cheese is indeed to make it "healthy", the bit about soft cheese is a misunderstanding apparently.

However as I am a crashingly middle class mother who wishes to push my food fads onto my child's teacher I will be steadfastly refusing to buy low fat cheddar
:o

Low fat cheese? What fresh hell is this?
Low fat cheese doesn't melt properly and would be a disaster on a pizza.... it goes sort of crispy and plastic-y.

Good for you op.

I wonder how schools are going to handle the "sugar is bad" trend. I shudder to think. I mean I get that we should probably cut our sugar consumption, but the way the food police deal with this stuff is often to bung in some kind of vile substitute.

Isn't normal mozarella naturally lower in fat than hard cheeses like cheddar?

Stick some vegetables of some description in the calzone and he's got double points for healthiness. If he wants to use chorizo, peppers and onions would probably go nicely.

Low-fat cream cheese is vile. Surely she should assign recipes and let her students make low-fat/sugar substitutes as they see fit?

If one of the criteria of the assessment is to tick the healthy box, and that means reducing the overall fat count of the dish, you will be doing him a disservice by insisting on full fat cheese. Why get involved? I'd just let them get on with it.

barbara, I'm required to supply some salad as well in order to up the healthy credentials

In fairness I would normally serve homemade pizza with salad anyway, but any salad prepared before lunchtime is unlikely to survive the day so will end up being binned

Haven't read the entire thread, but I read about the Government advising that people should cut their dairy intake. Can only find this article at the moment. I think this is incorrect and dangerous advice, and the fact that it's come from the Government is very worrying:-

www.heraldscotland.com/business/farming/14352639.New_Eatwell_Guide_recommends_halving_dairy_intake/

(My pov is in relation to the fact that low fat diets aren't healthy and in fact some would say that this approach, a few decades ago, started the rise in obesity due to sugar being added instead. So I wasn't commenting in relation to the affect on dairy farmers, although this is a valid point).

Yanbu. I have the underweight child (disability related, sees a dietitian) so I would not be happy. That said we just sent donations intomschool.and they bought the food. Got a bit fed up with everything being gluten free or the "chicken" dishes being made with quorn too.

completley missing the point but when I was doing food tech 7 years ago holy shit 7?? me and all my friends treated anything cooked in food tech as our lunches and they never even made it out the school gates

We also used to pay 50p-£1 if making something like bread or pizza to avoid us all bringing in flour and stuff