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?

If, for instance, your child is eating a chicken salad sandwich and an apple for lunch, and generally has a a balanced diet, then one small biscuit a day isn't going to do much harm.

exactly... but... why does the biscuit have to be eaten at school.

We just save it for home - if they need it - and to be honest I'd be providing more food if they needed one every day.

Yes but it's on the menu ???

And Oreos are rank 😡

That wouldn’t keep my kids going BeyondThePage. My autistic 10 year old would have a hangry meltdown. Her teacher asked me to pack a bigger lunch to keep her calm in the afternoon. She has a whole meal bread sandwich, banana, fruit chew bar, packet of crisps and a couple of biscuits/small flapjack. I could just give her 4 bananas I suppose.

I’d rather they had treats at school when they are eating socially with friends. The healthy stuff we eat together as a family. We’re all different aren’t we.

I just hate how they have rules over what we pack

If you have school lunches, fine, push those rules. I don’t see why I’m being told what I can’t feed my kids though

Isn't it about time we abolished pack/packed lunches

Time for the schools to feed kids nutritional lunches without any parents stuffing them full of burgers through the school gates. Plus they might throw in a bit of breakfast

What do you think

I speak as one who has never packed a lunch but it makes sense to me

That's ridiculous!

The Oreos probably have fewer calories than a piece of chocolate cake! Also for children to learn to eat healthily they need to see treats as a small part of their diet, rather than a special treat, which would make them more likely to want to eat excessive amounts of them as soon as they're old enough.

Isn't it about time we abolished pack/packed lunches

My DD with asd would starve herself otherwise

Can't believe the number of people on here trying to argue that Oreos don't contain chocolate because the word 'chocolate' doesn't appear in the ingredients. Chocolate is made from cocoa and sugar, both of which do appear, ergo Oreos contain chocolate. It just isn't milk chocolate, which is basically cocoa and sugar with added milk.

For the perfect parents who don’t send in empty calories, what do you put a packed lunch that is suitable for fussy eaters that can be eaten quickly, and will sustain them all afternoon?

Who thinks they're 'perfect'? Not me. I don't 'do' fussy though. I also don't think my kid'll starve if they don't eat for 20 mins. Actually, I'm pretty sure they'll be ok whether they have no food rather than shit food for a few hours.
No probs following the school rules. I can always fill them with empty calories when they came home if need be. Not going to raise a fuss just to make some kind of point.

If you lot could see how many children refuse to eat the pudding you might think differently... There is zero sugar in most of it, which appeals to me because I don't have a sweet tooth, but at least half of the children don't eat any of it. The only proper sweet thing I've ever seen is butterscotch tart which is about once a half term. And they don't eat that either! The puddings aren't the sugary gooey things you're all imagining I can assure you.
Hmm, I can assure you that the puddings at our school contain sugar. My friend is a dinner lady and has given me some of the recipes to scale down to make at home and there is sugar in all of them-my family eat them willingly. So obviously a localised sugar/no sugar rule,

Because of my friends job, I also know how dreadful some of the packed lunches are, so kind of get the ‘lunch box police’ for the families sending a tube of Pringles and a mars bar, but normal families sending a sandwich, packet of crisps and salad, an apple and a cake bar get penalised in the meantime which is so unfair and why I don’t support the lunch box police.
No idea what the answer is. At our school it is nothing to do with income apparently- some of the worst dinners are sent by those who financially are nowhere near the fsm threshold so raising that wouldn’t help either-it would have to be completely universal fsm to get them to have a school dinner.

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.

Policing everyone's lunch is not going to help that child. The school lunch police should be working with that parent to help her provide healthy food for her children. And I would be absolutely fuming with any teacher/dinner lady who removed my child's lunch without first addressing the issue with me.

I loathe the way we have become so non confrontational that we penalise everyone for the mistakes of a few because no-one wants to address the issue with the individual parents concerned.

Oh I'm so with you on this...my son was on packed lunches and I sent him with a chocolate crepe. He was told off for having it. It was both GF and nut free. My daughter has school dinners....guess what was on the menu for desert!

For the perfect parents who don’t send in empty calories, what do you put a packed lunch that is suitable for fussy eaters that can be eaten quickly, and will sustain them all afternoon?

I've never packed a lunchbox and now I daresay I never will but when mine were being fussy I told them to eat what was served or go hungry

They always ate. And if they went hungry it's not a biggy - after all a third of kids emerge from primary school overweight/obese

A sugar sandwich is two slices of bread spread with butter sprinkled with sugar. It’s yummy. Have you not heard of bread, butter or sugar?
I gave it to her because it was an excellent source of the nutrition she needed

Can’t see where this is quoted from but That is NOT an excellent source of nutrition

🙄 My 12yo has an extremely restricted diet and has starved himself to the point of hospitalisation after we followed the old "he won't go hungry" line from the HV.

After 10 years we are FINALLY getting somewhere in finding out whats been happening and it turns out there is absolutely feck all we could've done about it. No amount of "not doing fussy" would've changed the fact that he has sensory processing disorder and suspected ASD which has made him hyper sensitive to textures, smells and tastes so yes, he does need the unhealthy stuff at school because it's better than going hungry!

If the school had started policing his packed lunch then he would've been screwed as he has had the same things every week since starting school and won't touch school dinners, yet we had no "official" reason as to why he should be allowed this stuff. What about those kids?

I find the whole eating lunch at school a complete pain in the arse TBH. The school dinners are quite shit and they do have a pudding every day which I agree is mixed messaging. The curry is decent though.
I hate making a packed lunch, DS3 will only eat sandwiches, is a very slow eater. He has pretty much the same thing every day. Sandwich, fruit, veg sticks and one other thing eg yoghurt/cheese/cheddar biscuit/jammy dodger/bear yoyo/olives/sausage
DS2 loves strong flavoured foods but these get comments from certain classmates which upsets him. So he wants dinners every day.
Both of them moan that Jimmy soandso is allowed yollies/nutella/wotsits etc every day and it's not fair.
I'd rather bring them home for lunch but it's not really the done thing.

YANBU You know your child best, and if he/she wants a bit of chocolate to round off a well balanced lunch why shouldn't he/she?

"Have heard stories of kids taking 3 packs of crisps or multi pk of twix so can see how they need rules." Yes, but who are the rules designed to assist? A child who gets sent to school with a can of coke and a packet of hob nobs for lunch isn't going to start pestering his parents for organic avocado salads because the school lunch police have cast a critical eye over his lunch box. I think most peoples food choices are deeply ingrained because they are part of their particular culture, economic background etc, so it's pointless trying to shame people into changing their eating preferences.

Unless the person deciding what kids should and shouldn’t eat is a dietician it’s bullshit. I’d rather listen to a dietician educate my DC about a healthy balance than an untrained lunchtime supervisor that will use her own relationship with food to judge what is “healthy” or not.

PACKED

A sugar sandwich? WTF???

Why does the school offer chocolate cake? Why not a blanket ban on chocolate? Seems a bit off that they don't allow it in packed lunches and yet still serve it!