AIBU - restrictive school snack policy, hungry child

[nemoni]

Our children's school (primary) has a policy of only allowing fruit and vegetables for snacks at school. Completely get the rationale - healthy eating, relatively easy to set parameters, no overly complex education needed around it etc.

The only problem is I have an active child - plays sport (on top of PE etc) 5 days a week and generally on the go. He comes home from school ravenously hungry, grumpy and tired. He's also going through a growth spurt. I'd like to be able to give him more carbohydrates, even protein, during the day as snacks, as I do on weekends, particularly on days he goes to after school sports sessions. I'm not asking for crisps/chocolate/jam sandwiches etc.

School so far saying no, no, no.

I think it's a cop out, it means they get to look like they're promoting healthy eating while not really promoting a balanced diet, kids are scoffing loads of dried fruit, and don't have access to a water fountain during school hours except at lunch. And don't get me started on school dinners.

Am I being unreasonable?! What parameters does your school set? How do they promote and support healthy eating? Thoughts welcome before I book a chat with the headteacher :)

Oh no...and a fridge thermometer

Ours is worse, they provide all lunches and snacks, even packed lunches for trips. We're not allowed to send in anything.

The autonomy should TOTALY be with the parent, fgs. It irritates me

Well not so long ago it was.

However, it didn't work out well considering a third of 10-11 year-olds and over a fifth of 4-5 year-olds are now overweight or obese.

But the considering around 64% of adults are overweight or obese, that doesn't really come as a surprise.

i love the 'i was a kid in the 70's/80's and we ate shit all day' have you seen how fat people are comparatively??

some deluded people on here

Annesmyth my DS1 has cystic fibrosis and still doesn't eat breakfast at 26. I used to make him a Build Up, if I was lucky he'd drink a third. Logic doesn't work with a DC who isn't hungry until 10.

You see this is why things are getting out of hand and are ridiculous.

Going by other "healthy" food advice too much tuna should be avoided due to mercury(. 2 tins for a child a week is quite a lot) and processing is processing. Processed meat has strong links to cancer. Very little veg is being consumed. Veg is preferable to fruit.

But a few cubes of cheese during a 6 hour morning is not ok.

We can all pick fault in the choices of other people. None are going to be perfect but as part of a balanced diet very few will cause obesity or major problems.

Children do vary. My 3 vary hugely. My skinny child struggles to put weight on and is ravenous all day. He needs protein. I have another with sensory who can get hangry and wobbly due to blood sugar( I suspect low blood pressure like myself). My third could happily go all morning.

And a lot of organic food labelled as healthy has been found to be not so healthy. I read a report a while ago saying some had far more calories/ sugar than non organic. Making things yourself doesn't necessarily make them better as regards weight.

I don't believe childhood obesity is just down to food though. Kids just don't move around as much now, they spend more time sitting in front of a screen than previous generations. They don't play out as much now, and often it is not their fault, in some areas there is nowhere safe to play out.

In my area the council has sold quite a few of the public open spaces for housing, and that housing is built with ever decreasing garden sizes, meaning children don't have room to run around in their own garden anymore.

The reasons for the obesity problems are complex, and the solution is not merely a case of forcing children to be hungry at school because they can only eat one kind of snack!

I don't believe childhood obesity is just down to food though. Kids just don't move around as much now

Yes, and this is another reason they don't need any snacks at all if they eat meals.

I would say from years of KS2 playground duty that, as a general rule, the children who are most active at playtime have the most limited (if any) snacks, and it is those who are least active who eat the largest snacks most assiduously.

Hoddtastic, so are you saying all people who were kids in the 70's/80's are fat now? I think you are the deluded one. If you all think the young generation of today, who parents claim are brought up on virtually fruit and water are going to be the healthiest generation going forward, I think you are going to be very much mistaken.

Willow. Thanks for the advice, but I don't want to do a good handling course, neither does my childminder. Her doesn't want a second breakfast at hers, he's not hungry then. He's hungry at breaktime, so he has a waffle or biscuits or something else ( we try and give him a variety, but he goes through phases as to what he likes. I'm quite happy with the arrangement. I think school is tot to be honest. In four years they have never rang me once, and son says lots of kids do it. It's not like I'm giving him a bag of sweets everyday.

Mumzy, i think it's notb that way round.

My DS (a mid teen) is the spitting image of my dad and my elder brother - they all have the physical proportions of a stick of bamboo (very thin with knobbly joints).

In group photographs of my dad at around that age (1950s), he looks normal with this body shape. In group photographs of my elder brother at that age (early 1980s) there are a couple of heftier types, but again the long skinny body shape is the norm. DS, on the other hand, looks absurdly thin in comparison with the vast majority of his peers. So in the last 30 years, the 'normal' body shape for a mid-teen boy has changed.

It isn't the 'water and fruit' brigade who have CAUSED this, they are trying (crudely) to REVERSE the changes that have happened over the last 30 years (or for younger children, to not allow the change to happen) and trying to get back to what used to be the normal default body shape.

Of course, food isn't the only contributor to this change - increasing car use, reduced active outside play, screens all weigh in on the 'energy out' side of the equation.

It is also, of course, not fruit / veg per se that the schools want to promote. it is more that it becomes a shorthand for 'snack with some nutritional and digestive value, but not too many calories, that is cheapish, and widely available in lots of variety'. Boarding schools, IME, often have larger 'snacks', but because they are in control of the whole of the child's diet and exercise regime, that is OK because it can be balanced off against other meals and also against a heavy programme of sports. For day schools, often the snack policy is the only 'lever' that they have when looking at an increasingly obese population of children.

Cantkeepawayforever....Sorry, but I don't understand your post at all? Are you saying the fruit and water brigade are trying make people fatter? Or have I misunderstood? You seem to be saying that your dad was thin , your brother was thin, and your son is thinner? Some families just have thin shapes. Same in my family. Pictures of my grandad show him as incredibly thin, my dad too. All the boys and girls in my family are tall and thin. We all eat fine vwe don't live on fruit and water.vwe all eat a good mix of food. No-one has any hangups about food. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean.

Children DO need snacks between meals. It's very hard to pack their nutritional requirements into three meals. And to get their recommended calorie intake they would have to be hefty meals.

Children are MORE likely to become overweight if they aren't fed adequately because there is a biological drive to overeat in compensation.

Children need carbohydrate between meals.

Apologies,

What your post seemed to suggest (probably me not understanding) was that the aim of the fruit and water approach is to make children healthier that they have ever been.

What I was pointing out was that is not the aim - the problem is that over the last 30 years, everyone has got fatter, and this has started in childhood. So the aim of current policies is to try to reverse this trend of increasing weight, to move back towards what was the 'basic norm' of 20-30 years ago. So to move the current generation slightly back towards the level of health and weight that was normal in the past, rather than to try to make this generation healthier than previous generations were.

My point about my family is that my DS is EXACTLY as thin as my brother was, and my father was. He LOOKS dramatically thinner when compared with his peers - because his peer group is MUCH fatter. When i try to buy him trousers (26" waist, 34" inside leg), the cry is 'oh yes, we used to stock trousers that size 5/10/15 years ago (and I know this, because my dad still wears trousers of this ages, which are exactly this size) but there is no call for them now'.

allowis,

It's interesting. I do think it is all about the balance across the day and also (critically) about portion sizes.

I am old enough to have been of the generation that came home for lunch from school, and for 'afternoon tea' to be a thing.

We were brought up on carb / protein breakfasts (always had an egg,. or half a rasher of bacon, as well as cereal, milk, fruit juice and toast), school milk, then home for something like an omelette & salad, or a sandwich, or ravioli, followed by fruit or a home-made yoghurt, then a home-made biscuit or cake after school, finally with a family meal - light on meat (we were church mice poor), heavy on home-grown veg and with a pudding.

However, our portions were really quite small by modern standards, and there were very few 'hidden' sugars / saturated fats. We also played out every day, and walked or cycled everywhere that we needed to go.

not all of them Mumzy, you took offence at my post earlier and are like a dog with a bone because you are feeling defensive.

do you agree that obesity is a) a problem and b) on the rise?

the generation of 'never did us any harm/.we snacked./my packed lunch was cheese spread, a can of pop, a bag of wotsits and we had crispy pancakes and chips for tea every night' are now parents- i think of you look at vanity sizing/all the fat kids/all the fat adults/some peer reviewed research you will see 'it did'... or not. Because obv you're right on this (even when you just aren't)

Hoddtastic, you also think you are very right, when perhaps you aren't. I'm not on the defensive at all, perfectly happy with my choices which is what I have been saying if you read my posts. People have been suggesting how I do things differently, and I have been saying no thanks. I don't need to be defensive about giving my kid a couple of biscuits. I'm joining in the conversation and enjoying it, just like you are.

Hod....Ahh yes, yours was the post that said I should home ed, and that I'm filling my kid up with shi*t.....That was very pleasant of you. Don't know anyone who wouldn't take offence at that eh?!

I grew up in the 50's/60's. It was incredibly rare to see a fat child in those days. We didn't fuss over food and we didn't snack. There wasn't convenience food and so everything was cooked from scratch.

A typical school day would be breakfast cereal or toast. Lunch - either packed or school cooked - my packed lunch would be cheese and cucumber or tuna and cucumber sandwich and crisps. For me school meals were absolutely horrendous as I didn't eat meat and they had it every day - you had to have everything on the menu that day (no choices provided) and you had to eat it all... so I had packed lunch. School puddings were invariably steamed with custard. Dinner was something like casserole, egg and chips, liver and bacon, etc and pudding with custard. I just ate what the others in the family had but not having the meat. I still do the same now.

Everyone walked to and from school from a very early age. We were extremely plysically active at school and after it. I used to be very hungry sometimes before meals but it was normal to feel hungry and thought nothing of it.

Food just didn't play a big part in our lives as it appears to do today. We had a drinking fountain in the playground which often didn't work and we certainly didn't bring drinks of any kind in or any snacks.... it didn't bother us in the slightest. Why do children of today need all of these things when they're clearly not as active?

Actually hod, I had forgotten all about your nasty little post, and had continued to enjoy joining in the debate as I'm entitled to.you however should perhaps rethink how you talk to people on here. Very unpleasant.

allegretto "no crisps" would have also been a problem for my DS1: his consultant said he should have crisps for snacks for their fat content. He went to a public secondary school and they made no allowances for his illness, he's had diabetes since he was 14 as well, he wasn't allowed any snacks in class, I wonder what would have happened if he'd had a hypo?

There is a massive difference between crap made from scratch and ready meals,
I'd say a homemade cake made in the 70's would have been much better for you than a ready made 'healthy' meal from the frozen section nowadays!
Bit by bit we have had our food tampered with. Now we have up deal with HFCS in our British food.
Glocose fructose as it is known here. Sweetener from corn, responsible for the obesity problem in the US. A substance that the body just can't break down!

We did eat a lot of crap in the seventies (crispy pancakes anyone) but I suspect it was less crappy crap. I don't remember every thing being loaded with palm oil and cornstarch.

I was at a young couple's engagement recently and quite shocked at how chubby most of the younger generation were. The best figures actually belonged to the mums my age (late forties and early fifties). My own girls are active and slim, and lots of their friends are, so I'd never really come across this before.