Lunchtimes and junk food

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I grew up in a seaside town, we went allowed 'down the street' every lunchtime at secondary. Deep fried pizzas, double chip butties, or pasties re-heated at the bakery, followed by afters in the newsagent next door. Every day. The only rule was not allowed in the arcades.

Not saying this is just a problem where I came from but my friend is also having this problem - the kids are allowed into the fast food outlets next to the school at lunchtime, and she is feeling resigned to it and mentioned our lunchtimes as kids also.

I feel lucky in a way - also in a city and it ours, they are only allowed to eat in the school canteen and junk food is limited. It;s much easier, typical lunch is a baked potato, set hot meal, maybe a flapjack, fruit, veggies etc. (we see what they chose via the online booking site)
I think they are allowed into town in the sixth form but not before

I'm wondering if this is a usual thing that children are allowed access to fast food during school? It makes such a difference.

Where are what? Fat kids? There's an epidemic at the moment.

Whats a double chip butty? A 3 slice chip sandwich?

Our local (and only) High school has an open door policy when it comes to letting kids out at lunch (I'm not so keen on this). It's a tourist village so they go to the tearoom who serve them in a separate dining room just for the school rush or through a window in the kitchen like a serving hatch to outside. There's also two cafe food takeout places and another sit in cafe. All of which make a mint out of the school kids and offer something like a bacon roll, a small cake and a can of pop for £2.50 or something. Most kids eat unhealthy stuff like that 5 days a week.
Very few people stay on school grounds and eat the nice lunches.
Thankfully my DD is a fan of salad sandwiches so opts for that instead of a greasy bacon or sausage sandwich.

In my own school in the 90's we had no choice but to stay inside school grounds or we could have a special pass requiring written parental permission to go home and only home, no diversions. No chippies, bakeries, shops or anything. Teachers used to patrol in their cars and bring rule breakers straight back to school and their chippy lunch was binned. It was very strict. That was shit.

It's a good point about obesity these days. Although I was forced to stay in school over lunch time I still had chips and sausages every single day and bought 4 chocolate bars from the tuck shop at break (I worked from age 11 so always had plenty to spend) and I was skinny as a rake, as we're almost every single one of my classmates. Overweight pupils were few and far between.

These days though, there does seem to be a much, much higher number of overweight youngsters and that's with all we know about healthy eating and restricted sugar in soft drinks.

My High School in New Zealand (late 90s) we were allowed out in year 12/13 (so 6th Form), and those that had a car would go down into town where all the fast foods were.

I had a good friend when I was in year 7 and her parents owned a fish and chip shop, she took orders and her mum dropped off it at lunch time . Sadly it was put a stop to when the Head of Year found out

When I was at school I was allowed off site at lunch and I had chips pretty much daily yet I have never been fat!

When I see the dc from the school in the village here some of the dc are clearly overweight and they are not allowed out at lunch so that isn’t to blame for them being overweight.

So I’m not sure it does make a difference to be honest. As a portion of chips at lunch would not make you fat on its own. However if mummy drives and picks you up from school in the 4x4, you sit on an Xbox all night, eat rubbish at the other meals your parents give you that will make you fat.

I took a packed lunch to high school but it wasn't uncommon for most of the school to descend on the local chip shops every single day. I kept it as my Friday treat. To be fair the food cooked at school wasn't much healthier.

DD is currently in Lower 6th and they're only allowed out of school one lunchtime per week, next year she's allowed two. They have healthy lunches too though giant cookies are always on sale.

So I’m not sure it does make a difference to be honest. As a portion of chips at lunch would not make you fat on its own. However if mummy drives and picks you up from school in the 4x4, you sit on an Xbox all night, eat rubbish at the other meals your parents give you that will make you fat.

This is it. Back in the day, once you started secondary school, parents rarely if ever drove you anywhere. And it was a choice of bus or keep the money and walk. We walked everywhere locally as teenagers!

The fat kids on healthy diets don't see many of them around here anyway.

A chip butty is two white rolls in a polystyrene box full of chips.

It does make a difference. I feel as a parent it's easier anyway both on the wallet and for the kids less of the peer pressure to eat chips every day. I mean they do still go occasionally here (Yr 9) but more as and end of term thing on the days she school closes at lunch time, as the canteen in closed.

hat's why healthy diets was in brackets. the crap that has been lauded as healthy for the last 2-30 years has resulted in an obesity epidemic.

Low fat crap full of sugar or sweeteners. Convenience meals, the shift from made-from-scratch to shit that just goes in the oven or microwave. HFCS being added to everything and anything. Carbs being pushed as a staple.

It's a problem in Scotland, anyway, see here...

www.theguardian.com/society/2007/sep/26/health.medicineandhealth

"In 2005, NHS figures revealed that obesity in children was double the UK average. The previous year the Scottish Executive promised to tackle the "truly frightening" obesity level among Scottish children.

Yesterday, the executive outlined new nutritional guidelines for Scottish schools that would be written into legislation to apply from August next year.

At least two portions of fruit and vegetables will be served each lunchtime, oily fish would be served once every three weeks, while deep-fried food would be limited to three items a week.

Sweets and fizzy drinks will be removed from schools and chips only served as part of an overall balanced and nutritional meal."

Scotland's minister for children, Adam Ingram, said: "By targeting our youngest citizens we can make a lasting difference.

"Putting healthy options on a plate for pupils every day will develop their taste for the food that's good for them and stop unhealthy habits from taking hold."

Well, that was several years ago and from the posts above it doesn't seem this is the case with limiting it anyway.

I didn't realise Scotland was second only to the US in obesity worldwide

Eliza I agree with you on the low fat diet contributing to demonising fat etc, and sugar contributing etc, but I don't think this is as simple, it is more about the very high fat / high carb combination in these junk foods and the addictive nature of that. It's the normalising of such foods as the cool thing as well, the social side. Totally different from say a HFLC diet of healthy whole foods.

it is more about the very high fat / high carb combination in these junk foods and the addictive nature of that.

If this were true, then where were all the obese kids in the 90's?

Its the combination of kids being driven everywhere, eating shit at school & most probably home and never 'playing out' anymore in favour of sitting on computers or ipads etc. Its not just down to crap lunches, otherwise we'd all have been fat back in the day.

Lunchtime at school is 5 meals out of 21 regular meals a week. To put that in a deeper perspective, there are 1095 (365 x 3) meals per annum, of which 193 (school days) might be had on school premises, so roughly 10% of intake.

You keep saying 'it makes a difference' - a difference to what? loading up with red bull and haribo on the way in (Yes, local comp, Im looking at your kids in the mini Tesco every morning), or being served ding meals and chips at home?

School dinners are barely palatable in some schools with completely bizarre food combinations and regulations eg no white bread allowed for toast, but white bread sandwiches allowed for lunch. No chocolate bars allowed but chocolate cake and custard was fine. Chips allowed on a Friday. Pizza every day. Vegetarian option every day was jacket potato. This is all recently, within the last 10 years.

I don’t know any secondary school locally (London) that has an open door policy for Years 7-11 at lunch time, 6th form is entirely different. DS 6th form has a Costa Coffee and vending machines with fiz, crisps, chocolate, all at heavily marked up prices.

Oh well, I am happy I don;t have to deal with being asked for lots of cash to spend on junk food daily, anyway. Maybe others are fine with this but it is a lot easier as a parent.

Food at home is fine also as i cook that, and it also helps with not having cash to spend on way to school etc as it's all online. But there we go.