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.

I agree to an extent. Maybe if they fixed the junk food being cheaper than healthy food situation, they wouldn't need to ban cake in nursery. I suppose it's better to distract with a cake ban than make sure the public can afford to buy healthy food. I do believe we can all be too easily distracted by these events. We should all be rallying for a better economy, instead of banning cake.

I'm all for not bring in cakes to nursery. Allergies, pressure on parents to bring in cakes they might not be able to afford, healthy eating reasons (They do tend to be the cakes with think icing/chocolate), with 50 or 60 children on the roll it's perfectly possibly to have 3 or 4 birthdays in a week, arguing over which bits they get...
They're just not needed.

The government guidance won’t solve the larger problem but at least it’s a step in the right direction and raises awareness with no real cost. The economic issue can’t be solved in any reasonable timeframe (if ever) - which is unfortunate but reality!

It’s utterly bollocks. Education/ nursery can’t seem to make its mind up as to what level of ‘parenting’ they want to do. There is lamenting that not enough responsibility is taken at home regarding reading, writing, toileting, and yet as an organisation you’re going to enforce what children can/ can’t eat. If the early years education system genuinely thinks birthday cake (max) 25 times a year is fuelling all that’s wrong with childhood eating, well done on fixing it 🙄. Either have parents, parent- or do it for them. Just because you disagree with the parenting, work on education, not trying to unilaterally ban things

I'm in Scotland and can confirm that DS had cake at nursery yesterday. The children baked it themselves and presumably used a low-sugar recipe. Everyone seemed happy.

20 children's birthdays, 20 cakes.
I agree, it's not healthy and wouldn't happen in school.
They need to invest in a musical toy cake. Whip it out, sing happy birthday, job done.
I can't believe parents drop in the cake, what if one was psychotic.
In my children's school, the rare occasion that they get cake, it is bought by the school.

But your happy for nursery staff to dictate? What are you going to do when junior is 7 and going to classmates parties...ban them from eating cake. You do realise that kids at nursery have no control over their food, it's not like they are able to pop to Tesco's buy a can of red ball, a twix, a packet of salt and shake crisps and 20 silk cut is it... parents regulate what they eat so cake shouldn't be an everyday event.

Yes because a slice of birthday cake is the sole reason for childhood obesity maybe stop the nanny state and look at the child's home life this is about food education which starts in the home the parents control the budget do the food shopping and the cooking but birthday cake is to blame not the parent

Normally they have to be bought not home made to be distributed.

I totally disagree with this rule and hope they eventually see sense. How ridiculous! Children need to learn good habits, having a small piece of cake on special occasions is totally fine and not the root cause of obesity. It's also part of growing socially. Perhaps there could be better funding, provision or subsidising of healthy foods. Banning birthday cake! Whoever heard of such nonsense!

Id be fine with that rule. We were never allowed to send cakes of any sort into DC nurseries. Once over the age of 3 you could send in prepackaged treats e.g. haribo and they'd be popped into kids bags (where no allergies) so parents could decide when/whether to allow them.

Of course it is not, why should everything with celebrated with sugar.

Take the birthday child, school cake, home family cake, party cake, that's 3 cakes for one birthday.

A cup of diluted orange is a treat.
I didn't mind my DC having treats. Some parents do, it should be respected. The rise in ADHD, over stimulating or sluggish lack of attention has a lot of connections to the shit food on offer today.

I eat crap, when I focus on reducing sugar, increasing fruit/vegetables my brain perks up.

So cause ADHD is trendy everyone should miss out on celebrations really

The guidance is laughable. Banning birthday cake?

Scotland has worst drug death rate in Europe, lowest life expectancy (and decreasing) in W Europe, 21% of the population live in deprivation, it has faster increasing rates of death from alcohol violent deaths and suicide in Europe and the worst health inequality in Europe.

Banning cake is the equivalent of Tony Blair/Alistair Campbell's sound bite politics.

When I started teaching, and was in Reception, I bought a birthday hat shaped like a cake and the birthday child wore that and we sang happy birthday. And that was enough.

I remember being at primary school and we had a cardboard cake brought out and the same happened.

No one needs cake.

It started off in schools with parents sending a bag of sweets in. Now it's two or three bags of sweets because only giving children one sweet on someone's birthday must feel mean or something. I still only give one sweet out and send the rest home unopened.

It's not that a slice of cake is the cause of childhood obesity but the persistent belief that everything must be celebrated with food. Especially when one of the reasons given for adulthood obesity is emotional eating - eat when you're happy, eat when you're sad, eat when you're celebrating, eat when you're commiserating...

People can object to it on the grounds of drugs, cost of living, cost of vegetables but I, for one, welcome it and I hope they do it in England too.

Do you think children in the 80's had a 3 cake celebration on their birthday?
McDonald's or pizza after their party?
When close to half the adult population is obese, little changes will help.
DC won't suffer in nursery by missing out on 20 slices of birthday cake over the year.
If parents are bother, they can give them 20 extra slices at home.

Perhaps there could be better funding, provision or subsidising of healthy foods.

Absolutely no one who has developed a behavioural pattern of comfort eating is going to swap cake for the famed MN "plate of veggies" No matter how subsidised they are.

It's probably better to not develop a behavioural pattern of unhealthy junk food as an automatic reward or celebration in the first place.

They're different problems with different solutions.

And, tbh, the number of people who are angry at the prospect small children not frequently being given cake is quite staggering.

And, tbh, the number of people who are angry at the prospect small children not frequently being given cake is quite staggering.

I've been quite surprised at this! I suppose maybe it's people getting angry at the thought that they might be told what to do? Besides which, no-one has even banned cake at nursery. I think what has happened is that, in order to comply with new dietary guidance, some nurseries that used to allow parents to send in shop-bought cake (which was not all nurseries anyway) have now stopped allowing that.

We had cake, ice cream and jelly at parties in the late 70s and early 80s, when I was school there were rarely any overweight children or teens, more needs to be done about their lifestyles now. We went out and played cycled, played on a rope swing, played rounders and did not sit in front of screens. It was also every food is ok, in moderation. But I will say we ate far more healthy meals then (with the exception of packed lunches where there no restrictions). We went to a local pub a couple of times a month as the children’s cocktails were good, probably full of sugar though.

I like the favourite book suggestion.

I would rather the Scottish government was doing something about the terrible food in Scottish schools - ‘cheese’ made from powder reconstituted with water was a highlight at my dses’ senior school - but that would cost money, so much easier to make more nanny-state rules that smack of virtue signalling to me.

I also think the daily mile would be a positive change they could make for free - where all the kids spend 20 minutes running at the start of the day. Schools in England that have done this have seen a marked improvement in their levels of obesity.

Scottish schools do participate in the daily mile. It was after all originally introduced by a Scottish head teacher. Our school has taken part for over 10 years.

Apologies, @AAT65 - I hadn’t heard of it near me.

Home made cake has a lot of good things in for children - fat, eggs… never really understood the outrage about it.
Cakes bought from shops can contain lots of preservatives so I would be less keen for them to have those regularly. My children’s nurseries have always wrapped the cake up and put in children’s bags which seems like a good compromise to banning it completely.

Many nurseries only allow store bought cake to make sure allergens are clearly labelled and controlled for. I agree homemade is generally better as it’s fresh. I’d be more in favour of the nursery making a low sugar cake once a month to celebrate birthdays rather than parents bringing in whatever they choose.