to not get this about pack lunches..

[Butterflykissess]

son today was told in school he is not allowed to eat oreos at lunch time. as they are "chocolate." its hardly a flaming mars bar! and considering on the school menu os chocolate cake, ice cream etc. aibu to think ots ridiculous?

*before a meal

I think it's more important to look at the lunch as a whole. If the rest of it is healthy surely a few oreos aren't a problem? I also think that food shouldn't be taken off children, because it can create anxiety around food/ eating, which is a slippery slope.

If there's a consistent problem with a particular child's lunch, their parents should be contacted, rather than humiliating and punishing the child, or punishing children whose lunches are otherwise healthy.

I work in secondary, and there is no fruit at all available in the canteen, and very little veg in the school meals. There's pizza everyday, prepackaged muffins and cookies (which definitely contain sugar and no veg.) I agree, it's contradictory to allow treats for those getting school dinners but not for those having packed lunches.

If its a couple of oreos with say a sandwich and a bit of fruit I can't see the problem, a whole pack of oreos I can see it

no cake, no biscuits, no crisps, no chocolate, no sweets, no sugar laden pudding tubs or drinks

pudding tubs sounds like a particularly curvy Bond girl.

It’s all low sugar chocolate cake/ice cream and the school dinner menus are all nutritionally balanced so the lunch meal as a whole each day will meet the required sugar/fat/protein etc targets reccomended for school age children, which sometimes can include chocolate cake depending what the main meal options are. It takes a long time and a lot of work to balance a school lunch menu and not all parents put that much effort into their child’s packed lunch... I know I don’t. That’s why some schools police the packed lunches not that I fully agree with it.

It isn't a double standard. The school has more control over the contents of the school lunch than they do over the packed lunch. Saying "only reasonably healthy sweet things" would be completely unenforceable, whereas they can, practically speaking, make sure that happens with the canteen lunches.

Schools have to have a zero sweets policy because although your packing healthy lunches a lot of parents aren’t and there’s a bit obesity problem in this country.

Explain to me what is "reasonably healthy" about chicken nuggets and chips, followed by ice cream and jelly???

Rita it is the sweetners in the cake/milkshake/ice cream that concerns me more than sugar. They might be sugar free/low fat, but they are not a 'healthy choice' by any means.

my dds new school, state primary there is no lunch police. she is 10 and 5ft 2. her lunch is typically ham sandwich on brown bread, banana,orange, peach. Yoghurt, bag of crisps and a wagon wheel. as she is at school until 5.15 i think its reasonable.
previous school she had dinners but they did inspect lunch boxes and removed stuff

yogaginrepeat

Depends on the rest of the menu for the week. Yes, that is a 'treat' lunch. My school does similar. The rest of the weekly menu is healthier.

I get annoyed about this. I would consider Oreos a treat (chocolate biscuit) but as you say given the school dinners come with a dessert it’s not fair to say kids with a packed lunch can’t have one.
Our Nursery used to do this too, my daughter who didn’t like their hot dinners, used to come home upset quite a lot that she had to sit there whilst her friends had an ice cream & she didn’t (age 3 this was the end of the world).
I wonder if it’s a way to make more money.

I kind of sympathise with the school; if they're going to have a no junk rule then obviously they can't allow oreos as they're about the least healthy snack in the world. I guess it's tricky because your DS may be a healthy weight and just having an odd treat but someone else may be stuffing the packed lunches full of oreos and crisps etc. So it's easier for them to just blanket ban all junk.

I would hope they're serving healthy food themselves though. (Chicken nuggets and wedges could be perfectly healthy if they're using chicken breast, oven baking in olive oil etc. If it's just cheap processed crap swimming in trans fat then yeah pretty hypocritical).

Really wish parents would stop trying to justify giving their child a sugar and fat laden lunchbox because school dinners include a pudding. Yes they do, but as other posters have said, they are made to such strict guidelines that they form part of a balanced meal. My children have a school dinner most days. Iirc this week there are two baked options this week (a cookie and a crumble) and the other days are yoghurt or fruit. I work in their school and always pop in to see them at lunchtime and most days the baked desserts are barely touched.

but how is low sugar $hit part of a healthy diet?
loading up on sugars instead of well-balance fats/etc shows how poor the school understanding of good nutrition really is.

i say this as someone who had a pink of milk as my drink today and a full fat greek yoghurt at lunchtime - the horror!

Oreos aren't chocolate, they're made with cocoa.

When my dd2 was lactose intolerant and couldn't eat chocolate she could eat oreos as an alternative to a chocolate biscuit.

Can we all take a minute to remember the famous

Bread
Ham
Bread

Discussion?

At one school I worked in I sat on a table with a six year old girl whose lunch consisted of darylea dunkers, a bag of crisps, a chocolate yoghurt, a massive chocolate trifle, a wrapped chocolate cake and a penguin bar. She was massively obese. I'm all for policing lunchboxes if if stops that sort of abuse for one meal a day at least.

They aren’t getting ‘low sugar shit’ everyday, it’s once in a 3 week menu they get chocolate cake (in my local councils summer menu anyway) and it’s a tiny bit. Dessert today was fresh fruit salad and natural yogurt. Tomorrow is cucumber sticks and mint dip, Thursday is a homemade apple turnover and Friday is carrot sticks and cream cheese dip. They aren’t getting ice cream, cakes and crumbles every day. A lot of kids have biscuits and cakes every day in their lunch boxes.

Nom I very much doubt the chicken nuggets are high quality. IIRC, there was a report that less is spent on school lunches than prison lunches. They’ll be cheap chicken (probably that ‘liquid’ type stuff) then coated in batter, fried, frozen and reheated. I go to a healthy eating place in Manchester occasionally and have ‘clean’ chicken parmo, the batter is oat breadcrumbs it’s served with their own sugar free tomato sauce, a bacon medallion and a sprinkle of cheese. Served with sweet potato fries, rice and salad. With a drink it’s about £12-£15, schools simply don’t have the budget to do ‘healthy’ food like that. I’m glad we were allowed anything in packed lunches and got proper puddings when I was at school!

There's no point in removing sugar from the dieting it's also packed with wheat.

Carbs convert to glycogen the same way sugar does.

I'd get hold of a week's menu and some thermos flasks and send my kid in with replicas of the school dinners, cake, custard and all and see what they have to say then.

And it's PACKED lunch.

The no choc/sweets/etc rule exists because a minority of parents pack utter rubbish into lunchboxes given the chance. My 2 favs from this week: Jam sandwiches and a pack of Pringles plus a sugary yoghurt. Crackers with choc spread (child swore it wasn't hazelnut spread), a plastic baggy of cookies and some of those little chocolate eclair sweets. I took both lunches off the children and sent them for school dinners. They both wound up taking, and eating, chicken and rice with carrots. One even ate cucumber. There was low sugar ginger cake for dessert.

In the 80's packed lunches consisted of white sliced bread sandwiches, crisps, a chocolate bar or penguin etc and full sugar squash or pop.

School dinners were nuggets & chips etc and proper cake & custard.

We didn't have the obesity problems there are today.

MissCharleyP it is all high quality ingredients used, Friday is chicken goujons and wedges. Red tractor, farm assured raw chicken goujons from the butchers, plain flour, free range liquid egg, natural breadcrumbs and McCain simply wedges (ingredients: potato, salt). Every meat product used in my local councils menu is farm assured and British.