To wonder what the hell happened to healthy eating in schools?

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

We are currently looking at primary schools for DD1. On a tour today, we were given a sample menu for lunch. Every day had a sweet pudding, and I don't mean yoghurt and fruit style things - I mean cookies, cake, custard.

Fine once a week or whatever, but every day?

At first I thought it was just this school and it put me off, but I have just looked online at sample menus for two other primaries we are going to see and they are the same.

It is worrying me as DD has eczema and whilst I don't know the cause, it seems to be exacerbated when she has lots of sugar. At home we try to limit this.

I thought schools had all become lunchbox police! What happened?!

Yeah, bizarrely they serve cakes for dessert every day and yet when I stuck a Freddo in my 5 years pack lunch because it was his birthday they confiscated it. I could never get my head round it.

That said, I think the lunches also offer fruit but it’s obviousy up to the child to choose that

*5 year old’s

Yogurt can have similiar calories per 100g as cake though!

So I'd not be overly impressed with yogurt either

They may be called biscuits and cake, but they may well have very little sugar. At the school where I used to work, chocolate brownies were made with beetroot and over the week the dinners had the approved balance of food groups.

School puddings have reduced sugar, they dont taste like honemade or shop bought puddings. My kids refuse to eat them and ask for fruit instead, and they are sugar fanatics who would never normally turn down cake.

If it's anything like our local primary school, the cake only has a small amount of sugar in and often includes veg like courgette or beetroot! Its genuinely not like normal cake.

I agree with rusty, my kids refuse to eat the cookies and cakes as they are made with beetroot/courgette/carrot and don't taste "normal" to them.

Agreed RustyBear, at DS’s school all the puddings are sweetened with fruit/veg. He can confirm this after finding a large lump of parsnip in his sponge the other day.....

DC's school have low sugar cake, custard etc. That's why school dinner kids can have cake but sweet deserts are banned from packed lunches.

YANBU. Our main courses are shit too

Just give her a packed lunch. In my school this annoys the hell out of me. Pupils are told they can't eat food because it's not healthy when the hot meals consist of chips, a pasty and chocolate cake!

I get so annoyed with the lunch thing at DDs primary.

She has packed lunch and the rules state no crisps, chocolate, cake. Just healthy fruit, yogurt, water sandwich. They're very strict on it.

School meals on the other hand, chips followed by chocolate cake, biscuits, cookies, ice cream. It takes the piss.

The puddings in schools are generally low sugar anyway, however, if your daughter needs to limit sugar due to her eczema then the school should be able to accommodate this. Perhaps ask them as at my son's school that were really keen for all the reception children to have school meals.

My son has just started and enjoys dinners but can never accurately remember what he has had so I just make sure his other meals are healthy. He isn't keen on cake/custard though so tends to choose fruit/yogurt to pudding.

My grandson age 6 always says he has had pizza or pasta and cake when he has school dinner.
When I went to school in prehistoric times, it was a set hot lunch every day with a pudding, cooked from scratch in the school kitchen....no choices other than 'no thanks'... It was well balanced and healthy. That pudding was probably the only food we had with sugar in it all day.
Worked then....wouldn't work now that people believe kids will suffer trauma if they don't get loads of choice and loads of treats.

Interesting and reassuring that they are often healthier options.

She is at preschool now and the staff simply don't give her dessert except fruit. At home, she is never allowed sugary cereals, squash or biscuits. Probably a treaty snack like a scone or flapjack or possibly piece of cake once a week at her grandmother's or if we go out to eat.

The only exceptions are birthday parties when I let her have whatever because I don't want her to feel singled out - but then if she goes to a couple of parties in a fortnight her skin will get a lot worse, bleeding and waking her up at night.

Not sure I can trust a 4.5yo to choose fruit over cake so hope they will intervene.....

Agree with you. It may be low sugar cake, but it's also teaching them that meals finish with pudding. Sometimes I'd also like to be able to do pudding in the evening, but cake twice in a day is too much.
We also have cake sales weekly, tons of sweets at every event etc. Really unhelpful.

I completely agree Stuckforthefourthtime
My DC have come to ecpect a sweet treat at the end of every meal

With my dd’s school, we order the foods a week in advance.

We choose from several different mains but with pudding there is always a choice of 3.

One is a proper desert type like carrot cake, chocolate crunch, ice cream etc. The other is fruit and yoghurt or crackers and cheese

The portions are tiny, the cakes aren’t very cakey. Can’t see what the problem is.

they are quite wholesome cakes compared to real cakes.

some days the school meals are surprisingly good overall and other days they are a bit rubbish to be honest. They average the cost out over the week, you can tell the expensive meals as if its a short week that's the meal that gets dropped.

If your child is vaguely fussy and doesn't eat vegetables, they might need their pudding to feel full so I can see why each day there is something most kids will try.

You can make cookies and cakes with no sugar and totally healthy ingredients. I'm not sure if they'd bother though due to time and money

At our school the cakes are all sweetened with veg and the yoghurts are made on site, plain without sugar, with a small amount of coulis topping to sweeten. Even the ice cream made on special occasions is actually frozen yoghurt.

The main meals are all oven cooked, so chips are wedges, nothing is fried and things like bolognaise and tomato sauce are thickened with puréed veg.

We always get moans/complaints when we have invited parents/GPs in for lunch because the food 'doesn't taste right' - yep, that's because we can't add all the sugar/fats etc that you are used to!

why don't you just send her a packed lunch ? my son is in reception and takes a packed lunch he's one of three that does that so it might be better to do that. Then you can monitor what she eats

It's all healthy at my daughters school. She really enjoys it most days and she's not a big eater so must be pretty good.

We sometimes have leftover puddings brought to our staffroom, where they are invariably left uneaten as they are so, so bland. Usually biscuits, cake etc from other sources are demolished so it's not like my colleagues don't enjoy sweet things. Honestly, you can barely call it cake. If you bought it in a cafe, you'd ask for a refund! As an aside, some of the meals are really weird combinations of food I think. The cook told me this is because every meal has to be balanced with certain vitamins and minerals, whereas I guess when we eat normally we just try and balance nutrition out over the full day or even a few days, not a single meal.