To agree with the new guidance in Scotland to ban cake at nursery?

[AmericanMummmy]

The new guidelines from the Scottish government are effective today (1st August) - among other food restrictions, cake should not be brought into nursery to celebrate a child’s birthday (or any other reason). The goal is to fight childhood obesity and promote healthy eating.

I’m totally in favour of this and don’t understand the backlash! Everything I read on this topic is about parents and staff thinking it’s a huge overstep and sapping all the fun out of life, like kids need cake to be happy. If parents want to feed their child cake outside of nursery, that’s completely their choice, but why does it need to be at nursery too? I allow my 3 year old to have sweet treats on occasion (such as birthday parties or holidays/weekend activities), but it drives me nuts when he’s being offered cake at nursery (several times a month), and it’s always at pickup right before dinner time. They give him lollies on most days too from what he tells me, it’s just too much sugar!

Am I the only one who agrees with this guidance? Are there not other ways we can teach children to celebrate that don’t involve ultra processed sugary treats? No judgement to how people parent - and I love sugary treats myself- but I want to teach moderation and show that there are plenty of other ways to celebrate.

When you’ve worked in areas of deprivation where children DON’T have parties and the only celebration is the class singing happy birthday to them, then you might think differently.
Only last year, I had a Year 3 boy whose birthday it was. He has a pretty shitty life, mum receives food parcels from school as she has absolutely no spare money and was upset that she couldn’t afford a cake for him, we provided a cake, we sand to him, he blew out the candles and gave out the cake to his classmates. He thanked everyone for singing to him and was in tears with such joy at the little celebration. Those moments are absolutely priceless.

Before everyone has a coronary over lollies they're probably nothing more than some flavoured ice cube type thing with a lolly stick stuck in it. Homemade and perfect for hot days.

FFS really? So they have a slice of cake maybe once a month. Can’t summon up any feelings about that whatsoever, except to say that little kids find it SO exciting to bring their birthday cake in. It’s a shame.

I'd rather they keep the cake and cut out the lollies - lollies are way worse!

There was never any bringing in of cake or sweets to celebrate birthdays at my son's nursery, though one parent did bring in some dried fruit snack bars but that was the only time I've seen that in all the years my son was at nursery, or my daughter before him. But in the summer the nursery takes the children out to forage for blueberries then they all bake blueberry pie together which is really good I think as its educational, social, and reasonably healthy as its full of berries.

Oh ice lollies! I assumed lollipops. Ice lollies on hot days are a different matter, nothing wrong with that.

This does seem really sad.

Dd's nursery did cake and a party for all the kids birthdays. Almost invariably a caterpillar cake, and the birthday child got to eat the face 😂. She was so excited when it was her turn 🐛

It's going to achieve nothing. Children aren't obese because of a weekly slice of cake at nursery. It's an easy win for the Scottish government - they can get seen to be 'tackling obesity'. What are they doing to tackle the parents who feed their children too much crap, or the easy access for teens to a fried chicken shop and a deep fried pizza?

But that’s not what op is describing. She’s talking about parents sending in cake. Nothing at all about banning kids from singing happy birthday or teachers not being allowed to arrange a celebration for one child who particularly needs it.

People have not been regularly eating cake for 1000s of years. It’s only in recent decades that it became affordable enough to do so. Funnily enough, the obesity crisis has developed within the same timeframe.

They do this at DS2’s school where cake isn’t allowed to be sent in for birthdays. I sent in fruit kebabs instead. They do have cakes for fetes but that is after school hours.

Don’t know if anyone complained and you wouldn’t know they had done this unless you asked them about sending things in to school.

Not sure about what they did when they were in nursery, but I wasn’t bothered about sending in cake into nursery. I expected them to be quite strict about sugary foods and seeing the menu, where they had healthy puddings, I didn’t see the point. They had their own cookbook that was available free in the lobby.

This.

ScotGov are self-serving arseholes. Did the same with the minimum alcohol unit pricing and restrictions on sales of alcohol at certain times.

Diet is not, IMO, a governmental concern.
Go back to shipbuilding or providing a computer system that works.

Everything in moderation, including moderation. I can't see the harm in a bit of cake now and then, assuming it's a reasonably small portion for a toddler.

But yeah they absolutely should not be giving children lollies every single day.

I live in Scotland - we had a fab crèche when DS was small. They had their own cook who made lots of nutritious food and sometimes traybakes. Ds told me one day that they'd had 'flabjacks' [sic] which were so yummy he'd requested a second and was most put out to be told no!

Lollies?? At a nursery? No issue with some cake, but I’d assume a nursery regularly handing out lollies wants the children to shut up for a bit, and is also ignorant about choking risks.

Cakes are a spectrum anyway - oatcakes to sacher torte 😁

Get over yourself just tell the nursery you don't want your child to have any cake, other parents are not dictating what you child eats🙄

This isn't just Scotland, DFE have new guidance coming out in September for England (and Wales?) too.

Lots and lots of big changes coming, I've just done my training and anticipate lots of push back and complaining from parents.

You mean once a year? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Seems absolutely ridiculous to ban it. A small piece of cake once every other week (let’s work on the assumption there are 26 kids in the class, which is quite high for a nursery setting) is insane.

Our nursery has always been like this for all 3 of my children. I assumed this was the 'norm' for all nurseries in Scotland. I have learned something new today.

I fully support it. If you decide to give your child cake and sugary treats outside of educational settings, fine, no judgement here however, given the childhood obesity rates and dental issues in Scotland, we need to draw the line somewhere.

At my children's nursery they offer freshly made healthy food and snacks/fruit with every meal. As a result, my children are all great eaters and always willing to try new food.

I've noticed the same with their peers that attend the same setting. I've also noticed that their friends that went to other nurseries that didn't enforce the strict healthy eating are much more fussy and preference the beige food on offer over the healthy stuff.

It’s classic cheap ‘look like we’re doing about obesity’ BS from Scot gov - this isn’t going to improve the diets of kids at home, which is where all the bad food behaviours are formed.

if in twenty years we have lower obesity because kids weren’t allowed cake at nursery, I’ll be absolutely amazed.

All cultures, throughout history, have celebrations where people eat food which is more calorific and 'unhealthy' than the norm. What matters is what you eat every day, not what you eat on special occasions. Banning cake on children's bdays is draconian and vaguely dystopian.

Is this just Scotland, because our nursery in England has just issued the same guidelines this week. No cake unless naturally sweetened. No flavoured yoghurts or biscuits anymore.

Instead of banning cake, how about some party games, races, anything that gets them moving and burning calories off?

It's not really about banning cake, it's comprehensive guidance about nutrition and what should and shouldn't be included in children's meals and snacks across the whole week. But obviously cake is affected because if you're going to look at the whole menu and reduce sugar, you can't just say 'oh, except if one of the children has a birthday, but not more than one or two birthdays per month' (or whatever level PPs said they thought was fine) etc.

I don't think it's remotely sad though - the children at my DCs' nursery enjoy baking banana muffins (or whatever) just as much. The birthday ritual is exciting and fun because it's the birthday ritual; it doesn't really matter what it is.