Jam sandwiches at wraparound care

[JBeanGarden]

My reception age DD goes to a really well arranged breakfast club and after school club 4 days a week. It works very well with 2 commuting parents. I only have one gripe and that is with the food they offer. Technically the food should align with the school’s healthy eating policy, as it’s run by the school not an external provider. The school has asked parents not to provide sweet treats in lunch boxes and it’s quite strict about sandwiches.

HOWEVER the school is not transparent about the wraparound food offer and I had to email three times to get them to tell me what they provide. Once they did, they disclosed that the after school options include a range of sandwiches, including jam, plus a pudding of cake and fruit. Of course, my four-year-old always goes for a jam sandwich and ends up with a very sweet tea 4 days a week. The school says they offer carrot sticks etc, however, not one single parent has ever mentioned this in conversation and so I just think it’s something they say but don’t provide.

We do talk at home about the importance of a balanced diet, but she’s still only four and temptation is there! She’s offered something a bit more nutritionally balanced she gets home, but she’s usually just full of jam sandwich!

I emailed the school to ask them if they are able to comment on this or if they ever review the food that they provide at wraparound care, but I haven’t received a reply. AIBU to push this further?

Fuck me there’s always one 🙄 cringing for you @AlenaMacc

Its jam. Not crack cocaine. As for the people who think jam is full of rubbish and nasties jam is literally sugar and fruit. Some jams might have a gelling agent in them which is usually (but not always) some kind of pectin.

Anyway, its all irrelevant because jam is a gateway drug to all sorts of stuff. When your kids get to teens and they seem to live off all sorts of crap (current fave of my teen is really cheap pepperoni pizzas) jam sandwiches are tame by comparison. You might want to least as UPF a life as possible but as soon as your DC is a teen and has their own pocket money then the forbidden fruit becomes very attractive.

There is a recognised problem with schools and by extension clubs not following their own packed lunch guidelines…chocolate spread at breakfast clubs, cake at school meals. I think it’s poor and it has an effect on their eating expectations and preferences at other times also. I believe there is campaigning afoot and consultations to produce new guidelines that schools must be held to.

You asked for opinions, you're going to get them - it doesn't work that if you don't like the answers you can just close the thread!
I'm in complete agreement with you by the way, I get where you're coming from - mine used to go to breakfast club wraparound and they'd have a breakfast before they went as I didn't like them to go out on an empty stomach. Usually toast or some Weetabix or something. Then they'd make like Hobbits with second breakfasts of stuff like shite sugary chocolate cereal pops every day as it's not something they'd usually get at home 🙄😁
Kind of pisses you off when you're not even as a parent allowed to pack a chocolate bar or juice in packed lunches but they can give crap to them every day! Double standards

Raw veg, fruit, soups, jacket potatoes, cheese, salad stuff, sandwiches using wholemeal bread with say chicken, ham, cheese and many, many more options. It is possible to have a diet that doesn't consist of sugar and UPF's and it is also a lot cheaper and far, far better for you

Who is going to cook and clean up after all this cooked food?

That's a massive amount of prep and far more expensive. Who's going to pay for all of that?

Sadly, as others have said, outside of school hours they don’t have to follow the healthy eating guidelines.

I hate that my children get countless white bread at breakfast and sausage rolls/beige rubbish for dinner and we pay nearly £23 a day for each child for it.

Wish they could get something like homemade soup and a brown roll followed by fruit/natural yogurt and stewed fruit. They come out starving so they still need feeding again when they get home!

And pay the wages

Oddly enough I’ve seen these products advertised on Diabetes UK, but now I think about it, not so much lately. But our diabetic nurse clinician is dead set against them. She says they’re unnecessary and can have some adverse effects over time. Much of the sugar content is replaced and bulked out by polyols. These were developed as sweeteners, but the difference is that they are not calorie free although they don’t raise blood glucose levels as much as sugar.

When used regularly these can cause digestive issues and they can encourage incontinence over time because they have a laxative effect. She more than convinced me when she mentioned that these same polyols are used to make polyurethane used in mattresses and coatings !!

She recommended fruit spreads as an alternative and the main ones we use are St Dalfour, but once opened they have to be refrigerated and don’t last as long as traditional jams. Holland and Barrett offer a range of fruit spreads with no artificial additives, but again they don’t last as long as traditional jams once opened and they have to be refrigerated.

Diabetes UK also has a great recipe for a home made fruit spread. It uses raspberries but I’ve made it very successfully with strawberries, drained tinned blackcurrants in natural juice, and blackberries - tinned in juice or fresh. It’s just 200ml just boiled water, 150g of one of these fruits, one sachet of sugar free jelly crystals, flavoured depending on which fruit you’re using, and three teaspoons of granulated Stevia sweetener.

All you do is Add the water and jelly to a jug, stir in the sweetener, then add half the fruit. Mash the fruit up with a fork and then stir in the remaining fruit. Put in a jar or airtight container in the fridge until set and chop it up before serving to make it easier to spread. It keeps for about 5-6 days in the fridge.

There’s a marmalade spread too. Same recipe but no Stevia sweetener as there’s enough sweetness in the oranges. Use a sugar free orange jelly made up with 200ml of boiling water. Peel the oranges and remove the pith. Segment the fruit from the skins and finely chop and add to the jelly. Any remaining juice left in the core of the orange can be squeezed into the jug. Transfer to an airtight container in the fridge until set and then chop to serve. Again keeps around 5-6 days in the fridge.

God forbid that you should have to feed your own children.

There are a lot of parents that don’t even bother feeding their kids tea and rely on wrap around or nursery to feed their kids a tea. I have even read on here that supper is often cheese crackers and bits of fruit because nursery feeds them tea !

£23 a day is feeding your own children isnt it ? School meals used to be freshly cooked using fresh ingredients. Somewhere along the way we’ve lost sight of what’s important and budgets have been reduced so that basically our kids are being fed shite with very little nutritional value.

I honestly don’t understand this. Why are people expecting their school aged children to NOT be hungry after school? It was absolutely normal to feed your kids tea once they got in from school and then supper/dinner before bed.

I honestly don’t understand this. Why are people expecting their school aged children to NOT be hungry after school? It was absolutely normal to feed your kids tea once they got in from school and then supper/dinner before bed.

You don't quite seem to have understood the problem.

Everyone knows that UPF free options exist, notwithstanding the attraction some of the self professed health advocates on this thread seem to have for ham. The question is about practicalities, ie the things you were told not to forget and then didn't address at all.

A lot of ASC in the UK is walking a real tightrope at the moment due to a combination of difficulty getting staff, falling rolls and lower demand because more people work remotely. In some schools it's just not viable, and some of those that do exist are clinging on. That means any change to the food offered needs to not only fit within existing staff and facilities constraints, but also not raise the cost enough to make the setting less viable. Nothing you've said suggests you've even considered this.

Used to be done years ago. Fresh ingredients bought in bulk and prepared on the premises.

I don't understand your question. The nursery is supplying food, so why not just replace the crap they are serving with different food? Surely whatever the food, it still has to be prepared and cleaned up afterwards?

Are you saying that they can prepare and clean up after a jam sandwich but not do the same if a wholemeal bread and chicken sandwich is prepared?

During the day for school lunches. yes. I'm not sure it's ever been common to have ASC that offered this variety of food prep.

The distinction is important because it's difficult to fill the hours when staffing ASC. There's a pool of people who want/need to work school hours, that isn't matched by people who want/need 3-6pm ish.

And as I said earlier, healthier foods are usually cheaper than sugar, additive filled crap and for the fees childcare providers charge, they ought to provide decent food and not cheap, unhealthy crap

There isn’t the trained staff in this country to put that much effort into meal prep. I was lucky I had a good nursery and there was a chef on site that prepared food from scratch however this phasing out because they can’t afford to pay chef wages. Same with school dinners. I suspect it’s even worse with after school
club.!

We’re an easygoing house but I wouldn’t want jam more than twice a week tops.

You mentioned soup and jacket potatoes, which presumably you expect to be served warm. There was no indication that the facilities for this are even available to the ASC, and they certainly wouldn't be in every school. If they were, that would be an extra cost. So it's not that simple.

Except many ASC's are based in one room with a tiny fridge and no facilities to cook or heat up anything.

PP's example of jacket potato and soup - who is going to cook it, and pay for the use of the kitchen? How are they going to keep it at a safe temperature? Who's going to clean up the kitchen afterwards? Do the staff have the appropriate food hygiene certificates to be making and storing hot meals?

And who's going to pay for all these fresh ingredients, and where are they going to be stored all day? Who are you going to pay to prepare it all?

Oh come on. You don't need a trained chef to stick a potato in the microwave or make a sandwich! What people do need is education as to what is healthy and good for you and what is sugar filled, processed crap and is definitely not