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

There is, of course, a big ddifference between 'should and 'must'.

Suburban I always think that too! Like...dying in the desert? Nope! Can't have water! Only squash!

We moved to Oz and there's a massive problem here in that most state schools have a "canteen" where kids can buy shit processed pies and pasties (Ginster quality) and lolly ices and icecreams and chocolte and sweets and soft drinks.

But they don't do cooked lunches.

So some kids bring packed lunch and then have some old shite on top....other kids just have a pie and five icecreams.

Ours has no canteen and cooked meals two days per week so we're lucky...there's a strict no junk rule too.

If your child refuses things like wholemeal bread then you can get complex carbs from things like flapjacks or some cereal bars which have been banned. Scones too (which are fairly low in fat if you choose non butter ones) They are high in sugar but children need the energy. (I make a home-made cereal bar for dd from a book about nutrition for dancers).

The lady's son is autistic so I suspect he has a limited range of food. My autistic son wasn't diagnosed until Year 8. Aged 11 in year 6 he was the size of a 6/7 year old as he wasn't eating. His concentration & behaviour in the afternoons was terrible. Now I'm sending him with fortified protein milkshakes & lentil crisps & other food that he will eat he's improved massively.

I think it's ok to ban unhealthy food. However the school should practice what they preach or justify why they think they shouldn't have to.

Someone asked why kids are becoming overweight if lunches are not calorific enough

From what I have observed at the school gates children are coming out of school starving. Maybe they don't like the lunches or have had things like muffins & flapjacks & milkshake drinks etc banned. Do when they are picked up they then eat things like chocolate bars (full sized from the corner shop rather than small multipack ones ) or huge bags of crisps to tide them over especially if there is a walk home.

One size doesn't fit all though. Some children are overweight because they have a mismatch in their energy input /output.

what my child eats has no bearing on another child's weight.

I don't want my kids stuffing cake and biscuits everyday so they get a pack lunch I can control. I was shocked how much sugar mine consumed just by eating bread and a yogurt

Are they low fat yoghurts as often they are high in sugar?

I think its ridiculous as a parent i can decide what my child should have at lunch. My dds have a balanced diet and i dont actually put chocolate/crisps in there but both have a carton of juice. At least then i know theyve had a drink.

Dd2 is terrible at drinking - without reminding she could go all day without drinking even on boiling hot days. I have in the past given squash as she kept having trouble going to the toilet. If the school told me she couldnt have it i would make a complaint - her health is my priority, i will not let my dd become unwell because of some stupid rule.

DS1's playschool is very pro healthy food and actually give a laminated list of what the kids are allowed in their lunch bag - a half sandwich (or small roll/wrap), two pieces of fruit and/or veg, a piece of dairy and an optional very small treat.

I don't usually put a treat in, but the few of times I've put in halloween sweets or mini smarties from a party bag DS1 was overjoyed. I don't see the problem with that policy - the treat is too small to fill a kid up and the other stuff is all healthy.

Rebeccaslicker I'm no expert by any means, I read an article recently that said as processed sugar was something that was introduced to 'the human diet' quite recently, there is no real medical 'need' for it in our daily diet and its more of a poison than we realise. I can imagine that perspective being argued quite furiously though.

Cake or biscuit every day for school dinners here too, chips only once a week though. School have asked for 'healthy' break-time snacks.

Their school insists on only having an halal certified menu, to cater for a dozen children, That is not acceptable to Christian children at all.
So long as any animals have been humanely stunned before slaughter, that’s a bit like saying ‘the school only caters for vegetarians therefore it’s not suitable for anyone else’

That's not true Halal tho. They don't stun the animals because of the risk of killing them too quickly. So getting down to the nitty gritty of it, what we in this country call Halal is only a half truth (have a very strict Muslim friend who is very vocal about this issue 🙄)

My DS's old primary provided both Halal and non-Halal meat, as well a vegetarian meal. They had asked all parents for views on whether the whole school should go Halal, as there were a lot of kids there who only eat Halal food, but decided not to after some parents raised objections such as pointing out Sikh kids wouldn't be able to eat any meat that had been ritually slaughtered. (I'd suggested they go completely vegetarian at least one day a week, to cut down on waste - I'm not a vegetarian at all but thought it wouldn't kill any of the kids to have something different one day in seven - but they didn't go for it.)

I think we just have to look at the state of the mothers in that photo to get an idea of the kind of crap they'd put in their kids' lunchboxes.
If they were so adament about giving them 'flavoured water' squash them why not just quietly decent/dilute into a solid sided re-usable water bottle and no-one would be any the wiser.
But hey, they're after the group sad face shot.

Once they are providing school dinners which meet the standards they wish to impose on lunchboxes, I am fine with this. But as long as they continue to offer school dinners which consist, for example, of pizza and wedges followed by cake or biscuit, they are steaming hypocrites and look silly.

I don't quite get the "fuck you, it's my child and I'll feed him/her what I like" stance. There's several reasons why I feel like that - you trust the school to teach them and that includes nutrition; it sends the wrong message to the child if you're ignoring the school rules; your child might be slim and healthy but if he/she is having treats that might make it more difficult for others; clearly many parents AREN'T getting it right because we have a huge issue with childhood weight and obesity... Is it really going to kill you if you have to stick to the rules and send an apple instead of a chocolate cake?

I am in at some of the school menus here though, I totally agree with that. The primary school we've just signed DD up for doesn't seem to have stuff like that; for example the day we went to look around, the kids had had carrot and houmous as a snack at 10 and then lunch was mackerel pasta with tomatoes and sweetcorn, and pudding was an apple - this is v typical, looking at their menus. sure one pizza lunch every now and then is fine, but pizza and wedges and burgers and chips regularly? Seriously?!

sure one pizza lunch every now and then is fine, but pizza and wedges and burgers and chips regularly? Seriously?!

Ours has what looks like fast food every Friday ... but actually the food follows the same rules as the rest of the week, eg salt and sugar content, vegetables included, meat welfare standards, etc. So it's pizza but made with wholewheat dough and two vegetables on it, or fish and chips but baked not deep fried, etc. Then there's the same salad bar, fruit platter etc that they have the rest of the week. It's not Domino's/McDonald's.

I would resist getting hung up on what the menu looks like, compared to the actual offering. Some schools really are getting this right. Part of the reason schools want to increase school dinner uptake is because of economies of scale: they can spend a higher proportion of the money on ingredients when the fixed costs are already covered.

I have some sympathy with those saying their kids won't drink water as mine will ONLY drink water. I mean only, no juice, squash, milk, fizzy, hot chocolate, yoghurt drinks, soup (unless with a spoon). She had bad reflux and started rejecting her milk at 8 months old. By 10 months she drank no milk and only water. She is 7 and despite being offered things and encourages to try them she will go thirsty if there is no water on offer (even a slice of lemon in it makes it a no-no!)

It's easy to say - give them water, they will eventually drink it. They won't, they just won't drink until they get home.

I also suspect this woman did more than politely request a meeting with the headmaster to get banned from school grounds!

I think this isn't the first time she's been in the papers about this issue APILN have been following the story.

My extrapolation is that she was meant to be having a meeting with school, then went to the papers the first time, at which point the school decided she wasn't acting in good faith and took more extreme action.

On the not liking water issue - it doesn't surprise me at all in hard water areas. The water at my parents' house tastes disgusting and I can't bear to drink it (makes me sick actually) so I have to drink bottled water when I visit them.

Over here packed lunches aren't allowed at all, everyone has school dinners and lots of schools (like DD's) have no options in the dinner at all except for choosing which vegetables or salad to have with the main. Makes me wonder what happens with children with sensory issues and that kind of thing - have never heard of children not eating their lunch even when they don't like it (DD eats things at school she'll never touch at home for instance) but surely it must happen sometimes.

Ours is a Healthy Eating school. I send the DD in with the odd lunchbox. Normally consisting of:
Bread product (this week she had half a buttered brioche bun)
2 mini frankfurthers
Carrot sticks
A petit filou
A home made gingerbread biscuit
Water to drink

No-one moaned. The only time we ever had anything returned was when a Chub-Chub lolly made its way into the bag (Shame on DH!) However yogurts, cakes, biscuits are all accepted if the rest of the bag is reasonable and they aren't the bulk of the food.

Natsku, my son had school dinners when he started (lots of 'oh I'm sure he'll eat things he wouldn't eat at home/peer pressure/give him time etc) and I was told he was eating all sorts of things he wouldn't touch at home....cottage pie, carrots, banana, pasta etc. I was astounded, and pleased, and frustrated as he was still so resistant at home. Then they had to write a detailed food diary, saying exactly how many peas, how many spoonfuls of cottage pie etc, for his dietician as his weight was faltering. It transpired that he wasn't eating any of those things, but every day the cook would make him a slice of cheap white bread and butter and give him 2 petit filous style puddings. When I spoke to the school, a lady who sat with them at lunchtime said that he hadn't ever eaten anything from the school menu apart from some pizza and garlic bread. Then he became the only child in infants to have packed lunches.

Here's the first news story.

In a letter to parents, headteacher Linda Williams said: "City Catering provides us with delicious, healthy hot meals or sandwiches for all our children. The meals consist of a main meal, a side dish, a dessert and a drink - all of which are in line with our healthy-eating policy.

“We appreciate some children prefer to bring their own packed lunch. We would like to remind you that it too should be a healthy selection. To keep in line with policies and healthy-eating schemes, we offer children water or milk to drink. We would therefore please ask you to only send in water (not flavoured water) for the children to drink.”

The school's packed lunch policy suggests the inclusion of one portion of fruit; vegetables; a sandwich, rice or pasta; and milk, cheese or yoghurt, as well as a bottle of water each day.

But it says a packed lunch should not include chocolate bars, sweets, sausage rolls, cereal bars, flavoured water and cans of pops.

I mean, it's almost as though the school is taking a common sense approach to school lunches.