Lunch box police - AIBU?

[Ladyonashortfuse]

At my 4 year old DS's new school the children all take packed lunches. Before he started I was given a note saying no sweets were allowed in school - fine, I support this. On the first day I sent him in with a snack of mixed nuts (unsalted). A note came home saying no nuts were allowed because they could be a choking hazard. So on the second day I sent him with no nuts, and a chocolate flavoured yoghurt for his dessert which looked frankly disgusting but I'd bought it by mistake and nobody else was going to eat it. A note came home saying chocolate is not allowed in school so it would be 'preferable' if he did not have chocolate yoghurt again. Yesterday I sent him with no nuts, no chocolate yoghurt, but a handful of plain mini-crackers as a snack. A not came home saying no biscuit snacks. I can't keep up. Thinking of putting a note in his bag asking to be provided with a complete list of foods which aren't allowed in school, or for a new parent might that be construed as a bit passive-aggressive and rude?

Both my DD's have school dinners so I can't complain about lunchbox police.

My bugbear is snacks for snack time. Parents supply the snacks, we usually send our DD's in with fruit or cheese and crackers. I'm amazed at what others send in as a snack, usual crisps, chocolate etc sandwiches and wraps. It's not so much what they send but the amount that's sent, it's unbelievable some of the children don't even get to play at morning break because they are eating their snack which is the size of a standard packed lunch.

We do seem to be lucky, the school do send letters home (now weekly) to say what should be a sufficient snack.

salad cream sandwiches white bread.
sandwich filling (disgusting) but basically salad cream type stuff with nasty bits in. (my friends sandwiches)
dripping and salt sandwiches. (animal fat and salt ffs, on white bread)

(those were lunches from the 70-80s, not what I put in the childrens boxes!)

All you have to do is a sandwich,..a piece of fruit and maybe some cheese or some veggie sticks with a non fizzy drink.
Surely that is plenty? Kids don't need 'treats' in their lunch boxes. or cakes or biscuits.

The school day is a long day. I think them having a kit Kat or a penguin bar to look forward to at lunch is good.

A sandwich is good to look forward to.

Loved sandwich spread sandwiches (Eighties child).

DS has school dinners, but I tied myself in knots about snack time as for some reason I thought the school allowed no sweet foods at all so DS was going in with a mini pack of breadsticks and some veg batons or an apple every day! This morning, I asked him what his friends have so I could get some inspiration, and he said 'flapjacks, dried apricots, cheese and crackers, cake bars, cereal bars, bagel with cream cheese...' and then confessed he was a bit bored of breadsticks . Poor DS. I think maybe it's just nuts, sweets and chocolate that are no-gos and I'd got confused. Just gone and bought some cereal bars and mini Soreens!

Incidentally, before someone says it, I am aware that sugar content of cereal bars is as high as sweets/choc. I think school mainly ban them because of the envy factor rather than health reasons per se.

They have cookies and cake etc after the school meal so why is it any different if I want to send a small treat size chocolate bar or cake?! I have never had a note and frankly I dare them. I'd love it. I'll feed my children what I like. Unless of course someone else is going to supply and make the lunch for me. Frankly the nanny states gone mad.

Gild - they don't at our school. School dinner desert is fruit and yogurt, or cheese and crackers. No cake

DS1's school went through a very short stage of trying to ban just about everything (at one point cheese was a no no, because fat!, flavoured yoghurts were a no no because favourings! sugar!). All the while selling school dinners that were both repulsive and massively unhealthy. Now they just say, no crisps, no sweets, no fizzy drinks, no large chocolate bars.

Bloody nanny state!

I hate that schools have so much control about what our kids eat or wear!

I can understand a school uniform, but when it gets to the point where children are losing a days education minimum for wearing the wrong shoes, or the wrong length skirt or the colour or length of their hair!

Same with the lunch boxes, surely it's what the parent wants to feed their child! We never had the problems that they fantasise exists when we were children! Bring back the old days!

Gileswithachainsaw

This is what annoys me-cake, ice cream and jelly on the school menu! But if you put anything like that in their lunch box it's not allowed

Oh and yanbu!

I think they try to 'control' what is in a child's lunchbox because there are many parents who think that it is ok for their kids to eat to manysugary snacks.

Yes, parents will feed what they want to feed their kids at home but at least at school there can be some control of how much sugar and crap a child eats for at least 6 or 7 hours.
You would think parents would appreciate that the school are concerned about their child's health, especially with the rise in obesity today, but no, they get defensive and see it as 'policing'
The fact is a child does not need sugary snacks. They may want them, but that doesn't mean they have to have them every day. A child should be able to go 6 or 7 hours without a sugary treat.
The blanket rules are there because some parents don't understand how much is too much. For the health of every child I think parents should be more supportive of the rules and not start kicking off about them.

I'm in the Netherlands too but the only rule is no drinks in cartons because if all the children bring in cartons the bins fill up.
The school itself dishes out biscuits, crisps, Easter eggs, chocolate Santas etc all at the drop of a hat yet most of the children are built like whippets.
In fact there's only one overweight child, and because he's the only one out of about 250 the poor boy stands out a mile.

It's all that biking baroness! I find it really interesting having a conversation with Dutch people about healthy food. The idea that you would as an adult limit the amount of bread or dairy seems alien to many of them. Just an acknowledgement that you shouldn't eat frikendel (sp?!) every day!

It really shows you that more than anything having an active healthy lifestyle is key to being a healthy weight/ person. So if I'm trying to relate this back to thread we will really should be concerned about getting our kids active rather than making them obsess about their food.

Guilded Most school dinner puddings have low or zero sugar in. They taste rank, the cookies are like sugar free rusks. I don't agree with them having a pudding, I'd rather a better quality main course but they are not the same as a regular cake or a chocolate bar.

But got

More often than not the "rules" are made according to the whole nhs change fir life thing which really is only suitable for adults on a diet and ergo suggests replacing things like full fat yogurts to lute versions full of sweetners and other crap and to low fat alternatives which of course are worse for you as are far more highly processed.

The rules for some reason then left open for any member of staff to assign them self a nutritionist and perfectly good food finds its self on the naughty list.

If rules are going to be set they should at least make sense and be Consistently applied. And more importantly they should be targeted at anything but children. Oh and not sponsored by the very people making the highly processed nutritionally worthless lunch box products aimed at children that you are supposed to replace your cupboards with...

My point is though that these are my children. They are my responsibility. I will feed them as I wish. I am happy to give them a little treat in their lunch box. I don't think it's any one else's business frankly. And as for having to train people to eat properly...it's literally everywhere you look. We all know that fruit is better than chocolate etc. Anyone who pleads ignorance must have been living on a desert island. For what it's worth I think the problem isn't necessarily with giving our children little treats, as a society our portions are definitely larger than they were when I was a child, we used to eat very little processed foods as these didn't really exist in the quantities that they do now and of course we all played out. Our children definitely are more sedentary as a generation. Antway i dont believe anything should be categorically off the menu, and if you can't have a little treat at 4 then we'll it's a bad day.

Should be targeted at children not everybody but

Bloody phone

I've just remembered, when DD1 (who is now 18) started school I did have to go in twice to discuss her lunch.

The first time I had put a prawn cracker in as a one-off, we'd had Chinese at the weekend and had some left (no idea how!) so she got one Monday morning. The lunch lady told her she couldn't have it and sent it home. I went in and asked how a prawn cracker was banned when bags of crisps were allowed - they're not that dissimilar really. They couldn't explain why.

The second time was when she wasn't allowed to eat her Frube as it was out of date - that was because I'd frozen them when I'd bought them and put it, frozen, in her lunchbox that morning knowing it would be defrosted by lunchtime and not all warm and soggy. I was gobsmacked that someone had the time and inclination to check the expiry date on it!

You would think parents would appreciate that the school are concerned about their child's health, especially with the rise in obesity today, but no, they get defensive and see it as 'policing

But they aren't concerned about my child's health, they are concerned about box ticking. I'm concerned about my childrens health, because I'm their mother and thats my job.
Saying that, I think most of us are fine with some basic "healthy lunchbox" rules in schools. Its more the fact that they are OTT and inconsistently applied, and sometimes not based in any kind of fact at all.

For example, in my DC3's school on the banned list are: chocolate (fine) popcorn(not fine, whats wrong with plain popcorn) sweets (fine) yoghurts or frubes (not fine) cake (fineish, but what is wrong with a home made banana muffin fgs?)
I get to the point that between picky kids and school rules, their lunchboxes are bloody empty!

The policing of packed lunches is not an entirely new issue. In the early 90s, we used to have to eat our sandwiches before we could eat anything else. I was not and am not a fussy eater, but my mum went through a phase of giving me cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches, which after a few hours in a warm cloakroom would be all slimy. Dinner ladies used to shout at me for eating crisps (funnily enough I almost never eat crisps now) while sandwiches were still there. When I logically pointed out that it was alright because I wasn't going to eat the sandwiches, they insisted I had to. Everytime I told my mother I didn't like cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches (which wasn't everyday, as I'd forget by the time I got home) she would insist I'd never told her before.

What actually screwed up my eating was the insistence that I had to eat faster. In primary school because they wanted us out in the playground, and in secondary because lunch was 30 minutes. In that time we had to wait for an escort to the dining room, walk to the dining room (at the pace of the dinner lady's dodgy knees, keeping an appropriate distance behind her or we would have to stop until she was satisfied we were all lined up again), queue outside the dining room (easily 10 minutes if you were last to arrive as there wasn't space for everyone in the dining room, so it would be one in/one out once other kids had finished their lunches), queue up again for a hot meal if needed, circle the dining room looking for somewhere to sit, bolt your food and scramble back to class (possibly on the far side of the site)!

When we first started secondary school we got a letter home the first half term, saying we weren't eating fast enough. My parents were amazed at the way I started to hoover food down (and still do).

And that's the thing isn't it, it's just a box ticking exercise, based on an inaccurate view of healthy food for children.

I work really hard to make sure that my children have a healthy mind set about food. They get a wide range, and have never seen me diet, or refer to food as bad or good. I don't want to encourage over eating, nor under eating (or a mind set that might be triggered at adolescents) so I resent that well meaning but utter bollocks that is implemented in seemingly a lot of schools.