To despair of DD’s School re Healthy Eating?

[Bunnylady53]

They are so hypocritical! We got a letter home today about improving healthy eating eg fruit for snack time, bringing in sugar free sweets for birthdays etc. Then what do they give DD & her classmates on their last day? A bag containing sweets! Also they give sweets out as a reward for good work & there’s always a sweet stall at the fairs. At the summer fair, they have a stall where you can win jamjars crammed with sweets. Even at film night, they have sweets. It’s like they think kids are incapable of doing anything without having to be fed! Oh & often there are fundraisers where cakes are sold. I’m not against children having stuff like this but not so often & they need to be offered alternatives way more

Also, at things like the film night, the money is made by ticket sales & they don’t charge etc for a drink & sweets so why bother having them?
This is probably beside the point but I don't think they are legally allowed to charge for the film, they will probably be charging for the sweets and the film is free. They are making the money that way.

If schools need to sell sweets to enable funding then they need to drop the hypocritical lecturing to parents.

Schools are not allowing parents to make that decision. If you put sweets or other so-called "unhealthy" foods in a child's lunch box just once, as an occasional treat, you immediately get a red card.
Because it's much easier to have a lunch policy than it is to go round saying Child 1 can eat sweets today, but not child 2 because we saw sweets 3 times last week, or removing sweets from child 3 because this is the 8th school days they've had a lunch box full of junk (but that limits what food they do have).

A standard healthy eating approach for lunch is totally reasonable and ensures that all children get a reasonable lunch.

It's easy to say 'leave x y z to parents' and in principle I'd 100% agree with you. The problem is parents like you would make sensible healthy choices and a balanced diet. Others don't, they fill their kids with junk food, give in to pester power and then their child has to spend the day having sugar spikes and crashes which affects their learning.
On the whole, a healthy lunch approach is what most sensible parents would do anyway. It's no great hardship for your DC to have a bit of cake at tea rather than lunch.

I'm with the OP on this one. Giving sweets as a reward for good work imprints a habit of eating sweet stuff to reward yourself (personal experience speaking here). Sugar is addictive and giving out sweets, even if it's not every day, keeps the addiction lively. I found the only way to kick my sugar habit was abstaining completely. Eating it, say, once a week just makes me want to eat more. Plenty of kids now are addicted to sugar to the point where they lose interest in non-sugary foods.

I agree OP. Hypocrisy is rife with this kind of stuff in schools. They do it with other things too.

We had a whole semester on ‘sustainability and looking after the environment’, but the school merrily knocks back suggestions for recycling bins or an audit of purchasing practices (which would lead to better environmental choices).

Then there’s the alcohol ‘policy’. We have a sports day, where everyone brings picnics. They’ve now banned alcohol, as its bad role-modeling for the kids. Fair enough (even though no one was having more than the odd glass). But how about the wine fundraising auction? The frequent ‘girls nights’ and ‘boys nights out’ organised by the PTA? The staff farewell drinkies (on-site)? Oh no, that would be unthinkable.

Eliminating foods with empty calories, and based on sugar and little else makes sense to me. Bloody linking sugar treats to rewards, and ‘special events’ does my head in. By all means rot your own kid’s teeth and set them up for weight problems at your own home. My DD doesn’t feel deprived by her low-sugar eating, she gets plenty of bits and pieces at parties, etc. Schools aren’t the place for it. It’s not fun, generous or even ‘a bit naughty’ to give kids bags of sweets. It’s plain stupid. And usually the agenda involves adults wanting to score points with kids, rather than anything done for the kids.

Schools are for setting up good life practices, and encouraging learning. Sugar goes against both those principals. And teaching kids hypocrisy is pretty stupid too.

Sweets as treats is the right message, opposed to sweets and cake daily in lunches and snacks. End of term is a bit different.

I just can't get excited over the sudden horror of kids eating sweets. When I was in school there was a tuck shop at break to buy any candy and fizzy drinks you wanted.

This.
At my school KS1 get free fruit/veg daily as a snack, no chocolate or sweets are allowed. We don't police lunch boxes but a lunchtime supervisor might raise an issue with the HT if it was full of junk. Sweets brought in for birthdays are given at sometime and not opened in school so that parents can decide.

home time not sometime

Then there’s the alcohol ‘policy’. We have a sports day, where everyone brings picnics. They’ve now banned alcohol, as its bad role-modeling for the kids. Fair enough (even though no one was having more than the odd glass). But how about the wine fundraising auction?

Drinking at a daytime school event is different to winning a bottle of wine to drink at home, don't you think? It's about what is appropriate.Not every parent will be sensible unfortunately plus many will be driving. School wouldn't want to be seen to encourage drinking/driving/being in charge of children.

Flyingspaghettimonster
I could not agree more. You can tell the children that are denied treats etc at birthday parties or school trips, they gorge themselves.
My belief is make it available, not as meal replacements, but daily treats and then they never become a temptation.
My boys, grown now, never have had a filling, never been overweight, one doesn't like sweet stuff and the other is a nutritionist for sports clubs and a really healthy eater.

The staff farewell drinkies (on-site)?

I presume this when the children have gone home. A group of adults who are not in charge of children can then socialise how they want.

Promoting healthy eating through lunch boxes which are consumed daily is different to sweets as a treat on occasion

The OP did not mention lunch boxes in her post, but she said the school wanted parents to send in sugar free sweets on birthdays, but then provide sweets themselves (presumably not sugar free) as treats. YANBU and that is not a good message from the school.

As for the school fair selling sweets in jars, the PTA probably do this. All the same, our head always used to keep an eye on the PTA activities, we were not allowed to do stuff without the school agreeing first. The school should have vetoed the sale of sweets if they are so invested in promoting sugar free.

A big part of the problem is the so-called "healthy eating" policy approach isn’t about healthy eating. It’s about schools dictating to parents, largely because they’ve afraid of Ofsted judgments or criticism from other quarters.

Put simply, it is scientifically wrong to group foods into "healthy" and "unhealthy" categories. Blanket bans and bad policies are a poor substitute for educating properly about nutrition.

And it’s counter-productive. Dentists across the country are facing huge problems with child tooth decay caused, not by sweets, but by too much snacking on "healthy" fruit.

I don’t think I need to lighten up. As I said, it isn’t just about a few sweets on the last day of term.

We have a child at school who is not allowed to consume sugar at home. Not even allowed bread of any kind. This girl is like a heat seeking missile when there is cake or a treat around. It's eaten with an intensity I've never seen. What do you think will happen when that child can buy her own snacks?

Daily fruit is not the same as birthday sweets or fundraisers. There's a difference. These are kids at school, they can go from breakfast to lunch without a sugary snack (they don't actually need a snack but fruit or veg is great), they don't need sugary and fatty items in their lunch either - a sandwich or wrap plus fruit and water is fine. At 3.30 feed them all the junk you want but no kid is malnourished from having proper food, plenty are nutritionally deficient from eating junk! I helped out on a nursery trip (they were all 3/4 years old) and one kid had half a sandwich (ham) but also a large bag crisps (not multi pack size), a Milky Way, a cereal bar and a sugary yogurt tube - how can anyone think that was healthy?

So fruit and juices cause dental issues so public institutions do not bother dealing with sweets, biscuits etc and crisps causing tooth rot?

I agree stuck , my DCs always had a wholemeal sandwich or similar, fruit and veg and water or juice, crisps or popcorn on Friday. They also had sweets and or chocolate or homemade cake but not daily. They are 15 and 18 now, slim and no fillings with a healthy attitude to food and exercise.

Why don't you refuse and hand back the sweets when the teacher offers them out? You could also do the same at birthday parties, trick or treat, Christmas and Easter egg hunt. We'll all know exactly where we stand with you, and your children will have a good opportunity to absorb and reflect your sourness and crabbiness. Or, you could just accept a kind gift gratefully, and do what the rest of us do when we are given something not to our tastes from time to time. Someone bought me a bottle of wine at the end of term, how very dare they, when alcoholism is so rife in society.

Not in their lunch box though.

Does the friend with the wine gift send you reminders about your drinking and "drink wisely" advice? Do they restrict your access to alcohol when in their company?

It is not the sweets themselves, it is the hypocrisy and lack of joined up thinking.

Blimey! I am most definitely not sour or crabby! I think it’s very kind that the teachers use their own money but they don’t have to buy sweets. There are loads of other little gifts they could hand out

I completely agree with both your posts itsaboojum.

What also pisses me off is how ham-fisted schools tend to be about implementing their so-called ‘healthy eating’ policy. I don’t want my child associating sugar with an emotional reward. I don’t want my child eating artificial sweeteners. I don’t want my reception child being able to graze on fruit all day in her classroom. She has enamel hypoplasia caused by a genetic condition, and we keep fruit to a limited schedule at home in an attempt to preserve what she has.

In short, I feel I have a much better grasp of what’s healthy than my child’s teachers. I find the worrying that the government wants schools to extend their reach in this way, and then permits them to encourage unhealthy behaviours that are arguably just as bad as a sugary diet.

And we always have trick or treating, Easter eggs & Christmas chocolate!