Packed lunch police

[penneforyourthoughts]

DD’s school has changed their packed lunch policy and no longer allows them to have juice cartons of any description.

I know that there are bigger problems in the world but it’s made me pretty cross. DD is quite food avoidant and I do my best to pack a sensible lunch for her but I like the fact that I can give her fruit juice (flavour, texture and one of her five a day, I think).

I don’t want to make a fuss because it’s a great school but AIBU to raise it with them?

Ditto Morrison’s apple and blackcurrant flavoured water. I’m presuming it’s that type of flavoured water posters mean, not tap water with chopped fruit.

@Benjispruce5

Ditto Morrison’s apple and blackcurrant flavoured water. I’m presuming it’s that type of flavoured water posters mean, not tap water with chopped fruit.

I think sadly many people read FRUIT juice and flavoured WATER and think it’s healthy.

Nutritional education that eventually feeds back and educates the parents isn’t necessarily a bad thing

Coke, squash, lemonade are all just flavoured water!

I came home to find my 11 year old, with his feet up, watching the Simpsons and drinking a can of Fosters once.
Carton of fruit juice would have been the least of my worries.

@RAFHercules

I came home to find my 11 year old, with his feet up, watching the Simpsons and drinking a can of Fosters once. Carton of fruit juice would have been the least of my worries.

Omg. Hahaha. What did you do?!

@RAFHercules amazing.

I did what any good MN mum would do, explained that he was too young to be drinking, then went into another room and drank it myself

@Wroxie

I am against school policing lunch boxes for the most part- I feel like an actually unsuitable lunch box (nothing but sweets, or spoiled out of date food, that sort of thing) should be handled by the school speaking privately to parents on a case-by-case basis and that overarching rules are, in general, an overstep. However - while I don't think a daily juice box is a problem, the school is technically right it isn't actually healthy and shouldn't be considered a "five a day" item. Fruit is healthy because it has fibre and bulk and is relatively filling and, while it tastes sweet, the amount of sugar (especially in berries) is still fairly low in comparison to the overall nutritional value. "Juicing" gets rid of all the fibre and makes all of the sugar immediately available (if eating a whole fruit, some percentage of the sugar is still contained in the cells that don't get completely digested so it never becomes available to use by your body). Not to mention that many of vitamins and nutrients available in fresh fruit are reduced or destroyed by the heating and storage that goes into making and packaging juice. Vitamin C is pretty stable but other nutrients often aren't.

All of that to say that juice is a sugary drink and should be classified with sweets, puddings, and sodas, not fruits and vegetables. You can get fruit juices that have the sugar removed and replaced with artificial sweeteners which are fine I guess if your kid won't drink water but again it's not something that should be encouraged as part of a healthy diet.

This 🙌🏻 Offering an alternate POV here… I am a teacher and my school was recently inspected, and what was the ONE issue the inspectors kept banging on about…? Teeth. Apparently it’s our duty as teachers to do more about the children's teeth (and I mean, as Head of EYFS, I had a 1:1 Q&A with the inspectorate and none of my ‘but we teach children this…’ ‘We do a topic on this…’ cut the mustard.) After the inspection o did a fuck tone of research because the inspectors had referenced a change in the gov guidelines and I was pretty mortified that I hadn’t picked up on it, as I had been swotting up majorly, and finally found gov guideline which actually suggest that we should (in certain cases…!) be brushing childrens teeth as school 😦

Typos sorry!

Christ. I’m glad there was more sense around when I was at school in the ‘80s. I think I can say that universally we all lived on cheese/ham sandwiches on white bread, crisp and a club bar/penguin. No one was obese, but then I’d say 95% of us walked to school.

My parents would simply have ignored the rules (dad was a governor so it wouldn’t have got anywhere near being in the rules anyway) and continued to send what I would drink. Like a pp, I never really feel thirsty and often have to force myself to drink. I only drink full-sugar cordial or tea as I cannot tolerate sweeteners.

It’s ridiculous - as this linked story demonstrates: www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/04/29/Nursery-school-took-away-cheese-sandwich/20321272572477/

@ChrissyPlummer I agree, that was my lunch too back then but children’s lives are different now and we know better now.

@Benjispruce5 How do we “know better”? As I said, none of us were obese, I was at primary school 30-odd years ago and I’m struggling to think of even one kid who was out of the whole school. I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with sandwiches and crisp, I mean when I worked in an office it’s what about 90% of people ate!

I’d certainly stick my neck out and say full sugar is better than artificially-sweetened crap. I wouldn’t have drunk water/milk and would likely have been ill. My DN is the same; hasn’t liked milk since she was weaned (now 10), at break time in school she just refuses it. I think her school is fairly sensible though.

The nursery in the story I linked were completely out of order. Surely it’s better that a child eats something, rather than refusing and going hungry?

ChrissyPlummer Two thirds of adults are now overweight or above so I'd suggest that whilst they weren't obese then, the majority are now.
1 in 3 children are now overweight and 1 in 5 obese. That is shocking.

@MrsIPFreely

*ChrissyPlummer* Two thirds of adults are now overweight or above so I'd suggest that whilst they weren't obese then, the majority are now. 1 in 3 children are now overweight and 1 in 5 obese. That is shocking.

It is shocking. It’s pretty obvious why though - kids don’t walk anywhere any more, they don’t play outside and they sit in front of screens for hours. The problem could easily be solved if they moved about more.

Two thirds of adults are now overweight or above so I'd suggest that whilst they weren't obese then, the majority are now

Exactly. So the crisp and chocolate school lunches did nothing to educate them about healthy diets, and it’s caught up with them now.

So many children are currently overweight, they’re starting off from an even worse position.

@ChocolateDeficitDisorder

My lunch everyday at secondary school was a bag of doritos and a can of fizzy bought from the shop on the way there.

Mine was 10 Regal King Size and a sausage roll (I had £1 to spend).

It doesn't mean that I brought my kids up with unhealthy meals.

Ha! Me too.. chips, or melted cheese roll.. 2 fags and a shared can of coke.. no health or weight issues.. always had normal healthy balanced diet at home though..what I still live by.. 80 good/20 naughty.. still have healthy weight and no real health issues..

Obesity costs the NHS £6 billion a year.

@Derbee

Thank god my kids school doesn’t have any rules around lunchbox contents other than ‘no nuts’

Education, like the NHS, has nosedived under the Tories

Yes, if we want to send our children to school with sugary drinks, and have their teeth rot then god dammit why can’t we. OR you could teach children to drink water from an early age, and if they have to have juice, they could have it after school where they have access toothbrushes more readily, rather than letting the sugar sit on their teeth all day.

How ablist.

I’m in touch (via SM) with a lot of my former schoolmates. Yes, some of us are a little chubbier but not obese. Having a penguin bar or cheese sandwich does no harm. I honestly think artificial sweeteners are a major cause, as they trick the body into thinking it’s had sugar. Vile things.

@ChrissyPlummer snap on the 80s lunch…except sub ham/cheese for jam

@Benjispruce5

Obesity costs the NHS £6 billion a year.

Indeed. And is closely linked to deprivation. Policing school lunches is fiddling at the edges. The cost of addressing the causes of obesity would dwarf £6 billion.

Blossomtoes weight is 80% diet and 20% exercise. We do need our kids to be more active. Physical activity is not prioritised in schools and PE provision is dire. However, we also need a change of mindset about what constitutes a healthy, balanced diet.

You only have to walk into a supermarket to see why this is an issue. The entrance is always crammed with shit food that is really cheap. We have been conditioned into thinking that all this processed rubbish is a normal part of a healthy diet. The levels of salt and sugar mean we no longer appreciate natural foods and we constantly crave more.

No one needs a chocolate bar and a packet of crisps every day and yet we teach our kids that this is a normal thing to have.

ChrissyPlummer statistically 66% of your friends will be a little bit chubby (aka overweight) or above. Minimising is part of the problem.

Blossomtoes weight is 80% diet and 20% exercise. We do need our kids to be more active. Physical activity is not prioritised in schools and PE provision is dire. However, we also need a change of mindset about what constitutes a healthy, balanced diet.

in the not so distant past, we grew up with sugary drinks and jam donuts for snacks. And all hated the PE at school. But all kids played out all the time and there were very few chubbies.
Now as adults we are on the chubby side because of sedentery jobs, and leisure time isn't running around in the fields.

I do find it weird when people say they give their kids pure fruit juice as a treat or an raisins as a treat. It fruit full of vitamins and minerals. I aloow my son free access to the fruit bowl.