To think banning fried eggs is a step too far?

[NameChanger2026]

Whilst I agree with most of this, what’s wrong with an egg in decent oil?

Nothing wrong with poaching eggs instead. I prefer poached to fried.

I don't think schools will be using good stuff quality eggs or decent oil. My D10 loves a Burford Buff fried in good quality olive oil or butter but that's not what a school would serve!

No reason why you can't do fried eggs at home occasionally. Having said that I don't think you're being unreasonable. Everything in moderation.

But surely a fried egg is a decent breakfast option.
DS loves a mushroom omelette for breakfast, but on the days he goes to breakfast club, a fried egg and toast is what they give as an alternative to cereal.

I agree - it's cereal that should be completely banned, zero nutritional value and high in sugars( other than muesli and porridge)..

I don’t think schools are doing a cooked breakfast so a fried egg isn’t a possibility.

I find the whole thing a little misguided, I do believe in healthy eating, but I think that an important aspect of that is balance. I think this will lead to more food waste.

You can poach or boil an egg as easily as fry it and it’s fairly obvious that would be preferable.

Listening to 5 live breakfast discussing this as i read your post and they said someone contacted them asking what's wrong with fried eggs!!

commerical breakfast cereals might be (U?)PF and have added sugar but they are also fortified with vitamins and iron that children may not be getting much of elsewhere

What school is doing fried eggs!?

Definitely would prefer this to the cereal that breakfast clubs seems to uniformly provide.

Is it necessary to find fault with every single thing any government ever does?

Frying is known to add additional calories and higher fat diets are a known risk for future disease. Poached or boiled has been recommended for decades.

You can feed your child fried eggs at home, no one is stopping you.

If children won't eat what's on offer they will get no nutrition from it at all. Lots of children eat such limited diets at home that I wonder how they will respond to the healthy lunches on offer at school. Their packed lunches and breakfast from home could be a lot worse. There needs to be a big push to educate and train parents on how to feed their children properly. It's no good adding to the load of schools without laying the ground in the early years.

I guess it gets too convoluted if you allow for some not others. Poached and scrambled eggs are similar enough.
I welcome these changes so much and am amazed they havent been done before. My kids school introduced snacks of fruit and veg and for some of their friends it was the only veg they ever ate. Great it will be with every meal too.

MOST children will eat 5 meals per week at school won’t they? The breakfast club the school I worked at tended to have about 20 kids in out of 400, they offered toast and fruit and pastries on a Friday.
Obviously there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of the banned foods in moderation but there are 16 meals the children will eat at home so they could always have a fried egg for any of those!

Surely porridge and weetabix (if complemented with fruit) are fortified typically and healthy for kids. Much better than bagels, bagels are surely processed and hardly any nutritional value. Whatever they feed the kids, it should be high in nutritional value. Eggs are high in nutrition. It should be low sugar, high nutrition, some fiber, adequate protein, plenty of fruit and veg and HEALTHY fats for children.

Bonkers to give kids pudding with every meal and then ban fried eggs.

I was always 🙄at the amount of sugar in school meals.

Also to remember that you can do 'fried eggs' in no oil...and I have baked them in an oven before.... But eggs fried in oil I won't eat either

Far easier to scramble eggs without adding any additional fats, keep them warm and serve to multiple children than frying eggs in the first place. Don't see anything wrong with banning oil fried foods in schools. Parents can feed them fried foods at home if they feel so strongly about wanting them to have them.

Nothing at all wrong with the fried eggs, it's the seed oils they are cooked in.

We cook ours in tallow, I've been carnivore for 3 years.

I see what they are trying to do but it’s ultimately pointless. Kids have a can of pop on the way to school. They stop at the shop and buy all manner of crap when they get home and then have a shit tea. What they eat at school is a tiny portion of their whole diet.

The list on the BBC website seems OK. Just now mention of calcium which I find surprising for growing children. It would be great if pudding was routinely natural yoghurt and fruit and all children got used to that.

Just fry the egg on a hotplate thing and you don’t need oil?! No less healthy than a poached egg.

It isn't pointless.

What parents permit/do in their time is separate.

The cost saving to the taxpayer from any improvement in diet could be significant. The costs of high fat, high sugar diets is huge at population level.

I don’t think this goes far enough personally. Eating habits in the UK need a total overhaul. No need for chips, cakes, cereals or fried food at all. Plenty of notes we could and should take from European, especially Scandinavian neighbours. Boiled or scrambled eggs, fish, chia puddings, overnight oats, soups, vegetables, cottage cheese, hummus, rye bread, Greek yoghurt with fruit, frozen yoghurt or frozen bananas as desserts etc. Whole foods rather than processed, fried, sugary rubbish. In homes as well as schools ideally, but schools, where they are at the habit forming age, and so influenced by what the children around them consume is so crucial, I think.