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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think this is unfair re school dinners/packed lunches?

63 replies

Lolpoololpoo1 · 20/01/2019 17:41

Dd is 7. Her school is supposed to be a 'healthy eating school', she used to have school dinners for a while but stopped because they were quite expensive and she didn't really like them.

I always send her with what I think is a relatively healthy lunch, nearly always has a piece of fruit etc
Well on Friday I decided for a treat, it isn't like she has this every day, to give her some of her Christmas chocolate in her lunch.

She came home from school with the chocolate untouched, she said she hadn't been allowed to eat it, and a note about making healthy choices with a link to stufd about that on the government website.

Obviously I wasn't too pleased about that, kind of felt like school were undermining my authority?
But then we had DD's friend over that evening- she has school dinners and apparently for school dinners that day they had fishfingers, chips and fucking cake with custard!!

Found this out as we fed DD friend Friday evening and she didn't eat much as she had had such a large lunch!!

I'm all for healthy eating but AIBU to think that if DD is not allowed chocolate then the school dinner kids should not be allowed cake? Surely that's a lot more unhealthy and also double standards?

OP posts:
Rockbird · 20/01/2019 18:14

Have you actually tasted school cake? Have you seen how many kids don't eat it? I'm here to tell you now, as a TA and lunchtime supervisor that school cake/custard/biscuits/flapjack bears zero relation to what you would recognise. They have no sugar and very little flavour. The kids hate them.

So anyone trotting out the usual line about school lunches is absolutely wrong. And school lunches are set nationwide, not much wriggle room. Whatever your school says about putting chocolate in your child's lunchbox, what the school lunch kids are having is utterly irrelevant.

ThanksForAllTheFish · 20/01/2019 18:14

DD’s school has a no chocolate policy but you can send cake and/ or custard or a little pot of jelly etc.

I do get why you would be annoyed though as it’s untimely your choice as a parent what to feed your child.

In our house we don’t eat low fat products and we avoid artificial sweeteners like the plague. This is the sole reason I send in packed lunch as school options are all sugar free (ie full of aspartame) or low fat - with things like yoghurt that makes them high in sugar and full of all sorts of rubbish to make them taste nice. If we have yoghurt at home it’s generally the Yeo valley natural variety, sweetened with either some honey (small amount I should add) or some fruit like raspberry’s or blueberries. It’s amazing how quickly you get accustomed to it and find ‘normal’ yoghurts far too sweet.

We have no issues with weight in this house, if anything DD could benefit from gaining a few pounds as she is skinny and way, way down the bottom of the centile charts for weight.

It’s the usual though in this country, it’s all about the overweight kids and the ones at the other end of the scale, who struggle to gain weight, suffer for it.

UnsungHero · 20/01/2019 18:16

School dinners mean they get the pudding last

Packed lunches they can eat in what order they like.... which might mean the choc is eaten whilst the fruit is left

Houseonahill · 20/01/2019 18:16

I'm dreading DD starting school it's no one's business what I give my DD for her lunch but mine as far as I'm concerned but I had an eating disorder in school so might be more sensitive about children being told certain things make them fat.

EwItsAHooman · 20/01/2019 18:18

School dinners mean they get the pudding last

Not at our school, they get the whole lot on one tray all at the same time.

cdtaylornats · 20/01/2019 18:20

I wouldn't let a kid eat a packet of Mentos - sweetened with sorbitol which can have a laxitive effect.

DonCorleoneTheThird · 20/01/2019 18:24

Most schools have a nut free policy.

Quite a lot of chocolate contains nuts if you read carefully. It also make sense for that reason to ban chocolate.

viques · 20/01/2019 18:25

Schools put a blanket no sweets/chocolate /biscuit rule in place because otherwise you get the " but kit Kat is really a biscuit " gang trying to push boundaries. I once had a parent hand me an a4 sheet with almost every sweet / chocolate covered biscuit combination you could imagine, must have taken her all weekend to compile, she wanted it discussed at a staff meeting and the list to then be made available . She really did think that the staff had nothing better to do after school on a dark Monday evening after three wet plays to argue the merits of wagon wheels and club biscuits.

Sausagefingers9 · 20/01/2019 18:27

Yanbu. Same at my kids school, it’s ridiculous.
I’ve tasted the school puddings too and they taste no less sugary than any other pudding.

I wish they would offer fruit and yoghurts mon-thurs and then cake on a Friday. My youngest barely eats anything as he’s saving himself for the pudding every day!

RomanyRoots · 20/01/2019 18:28

I would give her any treats in her coat pocket and tell her to eat it after dinner in the playground.

Mumofonetwothree · 20/01/2019 18:30

Our school has a no sweets rule....but you can send a biscuit or small piece of cake (just 1 sweet item allowed)

So skittles, chocolate bar, etc are not allowed.
Kit kat, chocolate biscuit, cake is allowed.

4point2fleet · 20/01/2019 18:31

There has to be a line.

I once taught a child in Y3 who was given a family size bag of Doritos and a bottle of fizzy lucozade for his lunch every day.

If you think chocolate should be allowed, how are you going to stop the above being substituted for a family bar of chocolate every day and nothing else? Say chocolate once a week? How would school police that. Say 100g chocolate? Then kids will bring in 250g and want their 100g weighed out.

The only practical solution is just to ban certain things. It's not all about you.

DonCorleoneTheThird · 20/01/2019 18:35

I would give her any treats in her coat pocket and tell her to eat it after dinner in the playground.

and you wonder why some kids have no respect for anyone....

Soontobe60 · 20/01/2019 18:45

You should try a bowl of school dinner cake and custard, it's horrible as it has hardly any sugar in it. Cooks have to follow very strict guidelingpes as to what they can use for dinners. Wedges will be fat free, fish fingers will be oven baked, all desserts will be sugar free (therefore taste rank). It's all carefully monitored.
Lots of children don't like them because they are used to high sugar/salt/fat foods at home!
I despair of the crap parents send in packed lunches. Cheese strings, dairy lea lunchables, mini peparami, crisps, high sugar yoghurts, cartons of blue juice, mini cheddars, jam sandwiches on white bread. We've even had children bring in pot noodles and ask for boiling water! It's a miracle if they bring in fruit or a whole meal bread sandwich.
It's easy enough to save the treats for at home.

BifsWif · 20/01/2019 18:48

I’d rather my kids eat sugar than the chemical shit storm in sugar free or low sugar foods.

Yura · 20/01/2019 18:53

Have you ever tried school cake and custard? its pretty much fat and sugar free, closer to brown bread with natural yoghurt than to cake and custard. chocolate is not going to go down well

Yura · 20/01/2019 18:55

plus, pudding portions are tiny

Cauliflowersqueeze · 20/01/2019 19:00

If it makes you feel better, at secondary there is zero monitoring. They can eat nothing. They can eat healthily. They can just eat 25 chocolate bars. They can eat puddings and cakes and bring in fizzy drinks and as many biscuits as they like.

So soon you won’t need to worry

MarchInHappiness · 20/01/2019 19:03

YADNBU

Why are schools micro-managing lunch boxes? Fair enough if one DC comes to school everyday with two packets of crisps and three chocolate bars but most dc have a round rounded lunch.

FFS I think I can decide what my child can and cannot eat.

I am sort of an agreement that school dinners should be banned unless there is equality with school lunches.

Imustbemad00 · 20/01/2019 19:07

School meals are based on a healthy balanced diet. Children need sugar and fat in their diet which is why puddings are part of the school menu. They won’t have cake everyday, maybe once a week, and they are lower in sugar than you would think.
On the other hand, if a child was having chocolate in the packed lunch every day they would be consuming much more sugar in a week than the school dinner kids.

It does seem unfair but the school can’t police who has chocolate, what amounts and how many times a day so it’s just a blanket no chocolate rule which is unfortunate for people like yourself that would just put it in as an occasional treat.

With school dinner it’s all approved and making sure the children get a balanced diet.

Imustbemad00 · 20/01/2019 19:09

@Cauliflowersqueeze
Not necessarily true. My child’s secondary school doesn’t allow packed lunches at all. There is not even options on the menu. It is one choice per day (and a veggie version). Tomorrow for example could be curry, that’s it, no option if you do not eat curry.

DonCorleoneTheThird · 20/01/2019 19:10

Why are schools micro-managing lunch boxes?

because parents cannot be trusted to follow the rules, be mindful of allergies and give the right food to their children, that's why.

Drogosnextwife · 20/01/2019 19:54

*School dinners mean they get the pudding last
*

Not at my kods school, it all goes on the one tray at the same time. I've been to the "come dine with me" lunches with both my kids and I went to the same school so 8 know how it works.

Ninoo25 · 20/01/2019 20:21

I know in my DDs school the puddings are low sugar, but I think the school are missing the point. It’s teaching young kids that it’s normal to have a dessert after every meal. Most kids won’t see any difference between puddings served at school dinners and treats brought in from home.
Their school is a ‘healthy eating’ school. The food appears to be really unhealthy every day - fish and chips, pizza, curries, burgers etc. I think if they’re going to police packed lunches they should practice what they preach. I would also prefer if they only offered fruit as a dessert and maybe a cake and custard option on 1 day a week only (to teach them that you can still eat these things just in moderation).
That said our school follow our LEAs school meals program, so it’s not the individual schools fault really, but something that needs challenging across the whole borough

Oopsusernamealreadytaken · 20/01/2019 20:26

Our school also does “cake day” once a month. Used to be every Friday!!!?

Also do apple juice cartons every Friday for those who have meals.

As a parent who sends in healthy lunches, it comes across a bit like “we can feed your child crap, but you’re not allowed”

We never and will never have pudding after every meal either.