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?

If the problem is Sunny D, then ban Sunny D, not all fruit juice!

Kids shouldn’t be having juice. Maybe the issue is that you shouldn’t be giving juice at home and need to reconsider this practice. Instead of blaming the school for not enabling your poor parenting.

I'm shocked that the some schools have the time and energy to get involved with the contents of kids lunch boxes to his level of detail. Seems very draconian to me and I would definitely want to understand the rationale and what the school's policy is. Now that I have kids in both primary and secondary schools it does make me laugh when primary schools look to forcefully 'manage' the kids lunch choices - once kids get to secondary school all bets are off!! My view would be that primary schools would be much better off investing in educating kids on healthy eating and helping them to make positive choices for themselves rather than adding more and more rules that don't reflect what's happening elsewhere in the education system.

I always read these threads open mouthed in amazement. Our school doesn't have any lunchbox policy. There is no communication or restrictions at all. Not even nuts which I was really surprised about. The idea of the school interfering in something like lunchboxes, particularly to the the degree that people talk about it on here, just makes my mind boggle.

@Marelle

Kids shouldn’t be having juice. Maybe the issue is that you shouldn’t be giving juice at home and need to reconsider this practice. Instead of blaming the school for not enabling your poor parenting.

People on internet forums should not be telling others what their kids should or shouldn't be feeding their kids.

There's no such thing as "poor parenting".

@LadyCampanulaTottington

YABU fruit juice is not healthy. It's foie gras in a carton.

Oh my god, are they force feeding the oranges now ?

I’ve never heard of a school allowing juice. It’s water only at all the schools I’ve been involved with.

@Marelle

Kids shouldn’t be having juice. Maybe the issue is that you shouldn’t be giving juice at home and need to reconsider this practice. Instead of blaming the school for not enabling your poor parenting.

😂 😂 😂 😂

People on internet forums should not be telling others what their kids should or shouldn't be feeding their kids
OP literally asked for advice on what she’s feeding her kids. No, I don’t find it unreasonable for schools to ban junk food. My DC school also doesn’t permit junk food, including sugary junk food such as juice, chocolate or sweets.

@Marelle

People on internet forums should not be telling others what their kids should or shouldn't be feeding their kids OP literally asked for advice on what she’s feeding her kids. No, I don’t find it unreasonable for schools to ban junk food. My DC school also doesn’t permit junk food, including sugary junk food such as juice, chocolate or sweets.

Nope. She asked for advice on what to do about the school's new policy, not on what she should be feeding her kids. You chose to go way overboard and criticise her personally for making what most people would consider a normal and healthy choice - some natural fruit juice every day. Fruit juice is hardly akin to chocolate and sweets!

DD is quite anxious about complying with ‘rules’ and she’s adamant that she won’t take it in if it’s not allowed.

Problem solved. School don’t want it, DD doesn’t want it, don’t send it. And don’t speak to the head, it really isn’t a big deal if your child isn’t bothered. Give her juice at home let her drink water with her lunch.

But you might want to remind her that sometimes it is necessary for other children to have different rules for reasons she doesn’t have to understand, otherwise she’ll be confused when other children are allowed not to follow the rules. This has been a difficult thing for my daughter, who sometimes needs different “rules” when kids pick on her for having something different.

What, exactly, is the problem?

That just because you did ok with a can of coke every day, doesn’t mean society as a whole thrived on it.

I would email them. It’s a carton of juice, not crack.

Equally, it’s a carton of juice, not a medication she can’t live without.

Yeah, what @TataMamma said, @Marelle. And for what it's worth, I'm a fucking excellent parent.

Thank goodness schools minded their own business when mine were still in education. Some of the pearl clutching on this thread is hilarious. Kids need full fat dairy products, so do adult women come to that. There’s a history of osteoporosis in my family and my GP has advised full fat cheese, yoghurt and butter. Ideally it would be full fat milk too but I can’t stomach it after years of semi skimmed.

Our school is juice free. All the kids drink water.
I can’t see a problem with that if I’m honest

Kids shouldn’t be having juice. Maybe the issue is that you shouldn’t be giving juice at home and need to reconsider this practice. Instead of blaming the school for not enabling your poor parenting.

Judgey-pants pulled up nice and high here, I see.

Poor parenting is neglect or maltreatment. Not a small amount of juice as part of a balanced diet....

We were never allowed juice but our packed lunch policy did say we could include unsweetened popcorn...so I did and my DD was told not to eat it and it was removed, I received a phone call home. I told the school it was included in their own pack lunch policy and asked them not to touch food in my DD's packed lunch box...how would they like me to finger their lunch? Personally unless the child is bringing in a can of coke and a snickers bar I think the school should butt out.

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.

I told the school it was included in their own pack lunch policy and asked them not to touch food in my DD's packed lunch box...how would they like me to finger their lunch?

Precisely. Unless it was something like alcohol or a couple of Silk Cut, how dare they reach in and take things from your child's personal lunch box and undermine your parenting? After two or three occasions, it should be a note home with future 'advice', if absolutely necessary - in your case, followed by extra in-house training to help them learn to communicate with each other....

Can you imagine for a second going to an adult's night-school course and them trying to police any meals/snacks/refreshments you'd taken with you? Then why do schools feel entitled to overrule what a responsible adult has sent with their own child whom they know best?

Do they think that the bad and uncaring parents wouldn't have any number of opportunities to stuff their kids silly with rubbish, and not give them anything healthy or nutritious, outside of school hours anyway, if they really wanted to?

I really started having a problem with school policies because I can't see any logical benefit of them.
In my DD's school, boys and girls can't have their haircut under or over a certain hair length. I used to have a GI Jane haircut and I'd be probably non-compliant by their standards.
No earrings for boys.
No trousers for girls.

Certain items in lunchboxes aren't allowed.
I can't get over the fact that some people on this forum just blindly follow those rules and even say "it's the rule, don't think about it, just follow it".
It's the same for the rules on shoes for pupils, skirts of certain lengths, wrong shade of trousers etc.
It has no impact on the school and quality of teaching, all it teaches the pupils is to be blindly compliant with regulations and don't question anything.

All that talk of healthy eating soon goes out of the window when schools want to sell cakes, doughnuts/ice lollies, want money for the chocolate raffle or hands out Smarties for the Smarties challenge.

To all the holier than thous moaning about juice not being part of your 5 a day, do you realise that the NHS states it can be included as 1 portion?

Yeah, didn’t know schools did allow juice! Just let them have a carton after school?

My sons primary school do not allow -
Juice
Crisps
Biscuits
Cakes
Cereal bars.
They do allow popcorn and malt loaf

For my family it's not a massive issue, but for family with food avoidant children or even those on a chronically low budget (so much cheaper sadly to make a sandwich, few biscuits and an apple than it would be to do two pieces of fruit or veg)

Obviously there are extremes but I am so glad I could makeup my children packed lunch without worrying that the lunch bow police would be ready and waiting to swoop !

A carton of juice is 1 of your 5 a day, and drunk break-neck speed with a packed lunch because they want to go and play will cause minimal damage to teeth.

I don't see an issue with it.