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

Rebecca i honestly can't tell you what it is. For as long as i remember i have hated it. I also find it doesn't quench my thirst as well as say squash, so if i do drink water i have to drink loads which makes me feel sick. I'd rather have to drink two sports bottles of squash.

Don't get me wrong, with this next baby i intend to tackle the water thing differently. But DD drinks her daily liquid intake with squash; even her teacher told me when we tried the water it was like headbutting a brick wall

I don't think packed lunches should be banned. My kids school had mandatory school dinners up until this year and it annoyed me as now they are sent with something like a healthy sandwich/salad/pasta salad with carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes and fresh fruit whereas before they were forced to have meals like pizza and chips (or fried sliced potatoes as they were only permitted chips once a week!), with cake and custard for pudding. I don't care if the cake was a home made, low sugar variety I knew there was no way that school lunches were better for them than what they would be given from home.
Banning sweets and fizzy drinks doesn't work either I don't think. There are cakes, juices, biscuits and cereal bars that are just as unhealthy. It would be better if schools have a list of what you CAN bring if they are going to insist on packed lunches.

For an interesting comparison, I used to babysit a 3 year old who had these sorts of lunches at a bog standard state nursery (catered by the kind of association that also serves hospitals, care homes). This menu is offered in some pretty deprived pockets of the area surrounding Paris, but local authorities are still presumably managing to make provision of balanced, nutritious 4-course meals (+ goûter/snack) work within a budget, with vegetarian, organic, seasonal and local produce all making regular appearances.
When I'd go to pick her up at lunchtime the room would be full of toddlers eating everything on their plates with no fuss inc. daily varied cheeses (though admittedly most varieties there are quite mild), vinegar-based dressing, raw, strong-tasting and interestingly textured veg and carbs (endives, red cabbage, chickpeas, quinoa, mushrooms, bulgur) etc. Still quite a bit of cake though.

To be fair, mushy's menu looks good on whole too, so maybe it's silly my posting the above, as these variations are possibly not budget-related in the UK at all? No idea how it works. I was just so impressed by the French system as couldn't help comparing everything favourably to my cheaptastic lunches at an English state primary in the 2000s...turkey twizzler/chips/arctic roll extravaganzas so good

I work almost exclusively with parents who are finding it tough financially.

Children may well all have a lovely dinner cooked for them once they get home but chances are a parent who thinks cold burger and chips is a reasonable packed lunch won’t be cooking a decent evening meal either.

On policing packed lunches that should say.

It's difficult. It seems so sensible for schools to make healthy packed lunch rules, but they need to lead by example (ds' primary school has full-on sugary desserts, frequent after-school cake sales and kids handing out sweets on their birthdays.

So do you ban just chocolate and sweets, or are all sweet things banned? Many yoghurts are stuffed with sugar. Do you ban processed meat? Crisps? Is there much proof that the pie and chips they serve for school dinner is any healthier?

Some people's schools might have embraced the Jamie Oliver effect, but not all have!

Our school has issued guidelines this week. There are some gems in there such as no cakes or biscuits as they have a high sugar content, but cereal bars are ok . Also insistent that a dairy (no alternatives) item is included, even though one of my DC is dairy intolerant and only has packed lunch on days when the school can't provide a dinner that won't make them sick.

Its one thing to nudge in a healthier direction but another to give out bad messages and not be flexible when its needed.

Having had a DD2 in the early stages of an eating disorder, I object to all this talk about healthy eating among children. Then later, in her teens, she was put on a weight gaining diet by a consultant endocrinologist and dietician to get her BMI upto healthy levels - where she was told to eat cakes and high calorie snacks such as chocolate sponge with chocolate sauce inside!

If people want to give their children healthy food, that's upto them; but don't talk about explicitly to high achieving, perfectionist girls feeling the academic pressure!

Rhonda, you are probably right.
But if a child has been brought up on processed/ junk food until the age of five, will they seriously eat something which is quite different in a packed lunch in school?
Maybe a cold Happy Meal is better than no meal (if healthy food is rejected).
Tbh, I imagine there are a lot of not so good parents out there (and again, who are we to judge, and even if we do judge, are we completely perfect ourselves)?
It just strikes me as a bit intrusive to be policing lunchboxes even if it is done with good intentions.

I don’t think there’s any right solution. We try to do what we’re advised to do by our LA. I work with the local children’s centre who are currently running a free course on healthy cooking on a budget. They’ll get six parents at the most - and we have a high number of non-working parents at our school. I don’t know what the answer is.

There have been some schools who actively remove anything they deem unhealthy from lunchboxes. Without replacing it. To me that is waaay out of line. If a school has an issue with what I pop in a lunch box they should be addressing the issue with me not my child. Sometimes i think schools go a bit too far

Suburban i did one of those with DD! I can cook (my mum drilled it into us all) but it was something fun to do with DD & actually I picked up a few tips. It was very poorly attended here too, so much so that they cancelled it a few years ago 😔

It's also often true that the 'healthy eating' advice schools are peddling is ludicrous fucking crap eg diet drinks rather than regular (aspartame is much less healthy than sugar), low-fat everything (low fat is a scam peddled by the diet industry).

I wonder if some of this 'rules for the sake of rules' about packed lunches is similar to the obsession with pointless uniform requirements and the idea is to reduce the number of kids with SN in the school...

While I would never give my child something less me that I don't think that the school really has a right to dictate how parents feed their children.

Rhonda, I agree with you completely on that.
I was very upset when DS completed his food tech GCSE last year and spent a whole year designing and perfecting a muffin. (And he didn't design and perfect it very well as it happens as he only managed a D for his efforts)!
What a wasted opportunity to get children interested in and reasonably proficient in healthy cooking. (And I'm blaming the exam board, not his school).
Perhaps teaching (sensibe) cookery in secondary schools to a would help?

to all!

and sensible, sorry

Miaow my DD says water tastes 'even funnier' in a water bottle. I can stomach filtered water at a push but i can taste the differences in water when i go to my parents'. It's vile

SuburbanRhonda I am one of those mythical people that mn refuses to admit exist. Water to me tastes disgusting and yes I will happily go without for days if there is nothing else on offer.

Squash makes it palatable, I like mine strong so possibly a tenth ish of a glass but that's against 9/10s of water I wouldn't have otherwise had. I cannot see the issue and obviously a child would have much less concentrate in.

The blatant double standards I find terrible. Schools may say their cakes are no sugar and full of veg but you would get a snotty letter even if a parent lovingly made a sugar free all veg cake. Sledgehammer and nut come to mind

I just don't like the flavourless taste...and when I do drink it, I end up more thirsty than before.

That’s quite a leap, reanimated

The school has absolutely no idea what the child is eating at home though.
I also question the sanity of school dinners when ds2 tells me he's had plain pasta, mash and bread for lunch

Schools may say their cakes are no sugar and full of veg but you would get a snotty letter even if a parent lovingly made a sugar free all veg cake

I can only speak for our school but (a) we don’t have time to send individual letters out about lunchtime boxes items and (b) as I said upthread, it’s impossible for us to know what ingredients are in a cake just by looking at it.