To think the school has a point about packed lunches

[Rebeccaslicker]

I'm not sure about banning parents from the premises, but is it a bad thing to say no chocolate, sugary drinks etc in a primary school lunch?? (My DD is only 2, so I haven't had the lunchbox decisions yet, v interested in people's views!)

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/now-mum-48-banned-school-1108690.amp

That mum does not seem to know the difference between flavoured water and squash.

My Dd school will only allow water in drinks bottles, while I can live with this they seem to be brainwashing her too. Lately she has will only want water at home because she needs to be healthy or she will get fat. This is definitely not something she gets at home she is skinny as a rake and always on the go so we let her have treats and snacks as long as she eats proper meals. While being health conscious is not a bad thing at 5 should my dd really think she can only drink water to stay thin?

Our school serves only water to drink (no juice, no milkshakes) and four days out of five the only dessert is fruit. They get cake on the other day. So I don’t think banning stuff is hypocritical when none of the other school dinner kids are eating it either. But yes, if cake and juice are on the menu it’s totally different

Jamie - but if it stops other kids who aren't as genetically lucky from getting fat, is that a good reason, do you think?

(Not that I think using the word "fat" is ever ok at 5! But "healthy" maybe?)

Rebeccaslicker my dd is 6 not sure she should be thinking in terms of fat and thin or even healthy and unhealthy. I would think that this sort of teaching in a few years time could evolve into eating disorders.

I don’t understand the water thing. Flavoured still water has no sugar or fat yet schools still have a blanket ban. To answer your question @Rhonda, my kids would make themselves ill before drinking water (3 yr old recently came home dehydrated from nursery). Stubborn little f**r.

That mother looks she could do with having a healthier diet quite frankly

I am with the school all the way on this

Yes, at age 6 it's entirely appropriate they think about healthy and unhealthy.

And gosh, those poor African children, dying due to lack of clean water, only to find that when it finally comes they don't like it anyway...

I think it's more the quantity that matters.
You can die from eating too many oranges and drinking too much water.
I don't think penalising people gets them exploring ideas of healthy eating -

I don't agree there, sorry. I think 6 is old enough to start understanding the difference between water and sugary drinks; vegetables and chips; fruit and chocolate etc. Everything in moderation. I don't believe it would cause eating disorders to teach children that water is good for them.

But I do think there are lots of overweight children who are staring down the barrels of an unhealthy life if things don't change, and that really worries me.

I'm all for balance but is has to be sensible.

Yes I'd ban flavoured water because it's full of aspartame and all kinds of shit. Equally if the school are serving/allowing low fat yogurt that is probably full of the same shit so it is ridiculous.

I don't have a problem with the school serving puddings or chips as long as it's balanced and puddings and chips aren't pretending to be something they're not. The danger is with foods that we perceive to be healthy - like yogurt and these waters but often full of sugars or additives.

We have kids sent in with a premade supermarket sandwich, chocolate bar, and crisps. Even on chip day, our school lunches are healthier than that.

We work on a three week menu and in that three week, we are allowed to fry chips, once in that three week. No other food is cooked in the fryer, most of the other food is fresh made from scratch every day, including cakes, biscuits, jelly, custard, veg and potatoes.

Every day we offer four mains, a sandwich option, meat option, vegetarian option and a fourth which can fall into any category. Everyday there are three veg options. And every day there are three potato options. Every day the sweet will include a choice of freshly prepared fruit salad, melon, piece of fruit, yoghurt, and sliced grapes and also one of either ice cream, cake (sometimes with custard) or biscuit, tray bake or jelly, or muffin, and the portion sizes are in line with government guidelines.

The only drink we serve is water. We sometimes serve juice on special occasions.

The kids in my school go mad for pizza, curry, cakes, muffins, fruit salad, macaroni cheese, tuna pasta, fish bites, and chips. When we have sliced beef and Yorkshire pudding, 80% of the beef comes back and has to be thrown away. Eighty percent.

Your children are at home with you for 4 years before they come into contact with school dinners. How can dinnerladies (and councils) be blamed for offering items on a menu that your children will take because you never brought them up to take the healthy option? If all schools offered nothing but quinoa and lettuce leaves, there would be a hell of a lot of hungry children and a hell of a lot of angry parents!

And another thing from my side of the fence, you’d be surprised at the number of kids who’s school meal, is the only proper meal they actually get that day!

All infants are offered this meal free, juniors pay approx £2.10 a day.

Bloody good stuff in my book.

So if you want to pack your kids a home lunch, go ahead, your choice, but don’t diss the bloody good service that is, school dinners.

all the women in that photo look overweight.
I suspect the ringleader, reading between the lines, has been aggressive.

There will be children arriving at school with nothing inside them, a stodgy free school dinner might help those kids out quite a bit. If they just have toast for tea then at least they've had one 'meal'.

if you want to die on the cross of 'my kid my rules' then do it, but it's not all about you. I have fussy children. I give them 'an acceptable' lunch- can't you think of the other kids for that one meal a day that they eat at school, for 3/4 of a year? and not kick off about flapjacks and goodness knows what?

On local social media she says she is prepared to take the flak so other parents don't have to & there are lots of comments from other parents at the school supporting her. Also a few comments saying they are glad they removed their children from the school a while back.

I will make a biased assumption that the supportive messages are mostly written in txt spk bad English and are full of hun xoxo.
I wonder if she actually knows anything about nutrition or is she from the ah sure, we ate crisps and muffins when young and aren't we all healthy and slim camp.

OK, I just went on the Sentinel's FB and found the post.
Bloody hell. Words fail me.
Children need vitamins so let's give them pasteurised juice from concentrate or squash. Milk is more sugary for sure. Let's fight for children's rights.
They're calling the principal little Hitler and want her to resign.
Nobody will tell them what to feed their kids, they know best.
That school has been going downhill for a time and this looks like rock bottom.

I'm not surprised obesity is an issue. With this attitude those kids will be waddling their way through life when adults, with zero knowledge of proper food and nutrition and another generation of fussy eaters (i.e. kids who refuse to eat anything remotely healthy because they're fussy but show them crisps, a chocolate bar or biscuits and it's on the menu) will arise.

Maybe staff and children could eat together and eat and drink the same things

I did supply at an academy in a totally not middle class area. Breakfast was compulsory for students and staff, and you had to eat with your class.

You could opt for just coffee or just water but once a day everyone sat down and ate together.

I don’t understand the water thing. Flavoured still water has no sugar or fat yet schools still have a blanket ban.

It's sticky. If you spill water on a maths book it can be rescued, not if it is flavoured water.

Maybe staff and children could eat together and eat and drink the same things - how better to be a role model? This is what frequently happens at home - why not at school?

Oh fgs. Because staff are legally entitled to a break in their working day. Perhaps we could expect the teaching of table manners etc to come from their parents, instead of pushing everything onto teachers.

I don't understand how you let them get to the stage of not drinking water?

It's not a case of letting or not.
Some children have very strong taste preferences. You work around them as best you can. None of my DCs (all NT) would eat the sort of foods approved in UK lunchboxes when they were young. Add dairy allergy, tree nut allergy, and soy allergy to that and their choices would have been extremely limited. True they limited themselves in large measure, but can you really pinch their noses and make they try raw carrots?

I think schools should back off. They are overreaching.

I don't understand how you let them get to the stage of not drinking water?

She’s carrying blue top - so “No added sugar” Vimto, not “sugary”other than the sugars from the fruits it contains.

but let’s not let the facts get in the way.

Have you not seen reports that no added sugar is a bad as full sugar in terms of weight gain and obesity? Have you also not seen a more recent report that fizzy drinks including sparkling water interferes with messages of satiety thus also contributing to weight gain?

I imagine the second study will need replication but as stands, these are the facts.

Yes. But those facts have nothing to do with my post.

But was referring to the word "sugary" that people seem to have set up as the root of all evil.

The drink was a no added sugar, fruit squash. 10% fruit juice.

It was not fizzy either.

But people seem to be focussing on the Vimto thing.

But people seem to be focussing on the Vimto thing.
Because it is neither water nor flavoured water.

The fact parenrs like her can't grasp that so are joining thr long line of (usually) idiots who go to tje local press for things like i sent juice in when school said ni juice / i bought trainers but school have said no trainers ans my boy has to follow the rules / school rules said non skinny trousers but i sent my child in in leggings' says it all. Bonus marks if said 'fuming' parent is photographed holding offended with an angry face pose or has the offending item displayed whilst folding their arms. Extta bonus points if it's a secondary school one and the child who is incapable of following rules is also photographed with a caption 'timmy is upset that he had to spend a day in isolation instead of with his friends in class' because given Timmy's parent's attitude to rules he was probably looking forward to chatting with his mates and arguing iver whether he should take his hoody off and write the title

This sort of thing brings out the worst I think in the middle class. Oh but we only drink water that has a few drops of lemon in it! That seems to be deemed ok but squash is seen as low class because it's manufactured. "All those dreadful chemicals" can I remind you everything is a chemical whether it's manufactured or not, and manufactured things are often safer because they do have preservatives in - homemade can lead to illness due to bacteria!

Headofthehive55
It's not about class it's about parents getting their head around the fact that schools.have rules.

Every secondary i've worked in has been no fizzy drinks (other than sparkling water) and no energy drinks.
One parent allowed her 11 year old up til midnight gaming (because 'what can you do at that age...') and then because he was tired would send him in with 3 cans of monster to get him through the day. It's hardly surprising tjat the child's attitude and behaviour was poor and he became quite aggressive in his approach to people when challenged. We confiacated his monster every and mum rang up thencame to school to yell at our year manager that staff had no power to take her child's lunch. It was against his human rights abd we should be ashamed of outselves. After all, he drinks this stuff all day at hoke and she has no trouble with him.

Class doesn't come into it. It's people who think the rules don't apply to their children