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?

Show me a school providing fried eggs 😂. Cheap cereal and white toast around here!

Fried eggs are healthy, they do not need to be cooked in huge quantities of oil, just a small splash,about a teaspoon, in a decent non stick pan, most of that oil stays in the pan afterwards anyway.
And don't think by frying in olive oil is better, just a waste of good oil.

This!

I have never worked in a school that serves fried eggs and if they did they'd be crucified and nobody would eat them.

I've never even seen an egg on offer before!!!

Worked in schools since 2012!

Fried eggs are fab but I’ve never come across a school serving them so it’s probably not going to have much impact here

This made me roar 😭😭😭 you think a 14 year olds heart can tell the difference?! Get you with your fancy eggs, I’m sure you 14 year old is so much less at risk of a heart attack than the feckless kids on Asda eggs and sunflower oil 😂

Fried eggs are fab. But I suspect this is more about forming habits than the danger of the actual food

The problem is that we have kids who have diets that have zero fresh fruit and veg or nutritious whole foods - all packets and processed food. I was behind a parent in Tesco last week and her massive trolley was unloaded to show that the only item of fresh food in it was a small bunch of bananas. Everything else was in a box and UPF. Nothing to cook, just oven baked crap. She has four primary aged kids. She is lovely but clearly needs educating about healthy eating and cooking. That education starts when they are small and malleable.

yes the move is draconian but my gosh we need those drastic steps to change the appalling diets of many people in this country.

This is not how many eggs are fried, especially if done in large quantities.

Peak mumsnet

I was aiming to be light hearted 😅 but on a serious note I wouldn't want her eating loads of bad quality food made extra bad by being fried in bad oil.

Absolutely must be a Burford Buff, and if it's not cold pressed organic olive oil from hand-picked olives, don't even talk to me

Haha! This is such a MN response. I didn’t even know eggs had names other than small, medium or large.

People saying about cereals might be getting a bit carried away- weetabix, corn flakes and Rice Krispies are fortified with vitamins and minerals and low in sugar and salt? The world is gone a bit mad on policing food in this respect- it’s like when people ask about issues and on mn people say dairy is damaging, but it provides nutrients people need to stave off bone related illnesses, we don’t need to cut people’s choices further. Someone out there will say it’s muesli porridge or nothing or they’ll say it’s Greek yoghurt or nothing- but there’s degrees to everything- in reality people aren’t ridiculously unhealthy if they have a strawberry flavoured supermarket brand yoghurt!!

And what about packed lunches? My DD says that some children just have crisps and chocolate/sweets.

It looks like they are restricting puddings as well to twice a week.

Packed lunches which are provided by parents.

Some schools police these, some don't. Speak to your school if you want a policy change.

I dont like fried eggs I always poach but proper butter is non negotiable.

My D10 loves a Burford Buff fried in good quality olive oil or butter

😂😂😂 thank for giving me my new favourite MN line!

Is this instead of or on the side of a massive salad?

Agree, it is all so prescriptive.

What they actually need to do is scrap the restrictions and actually
fund school dinners so the staff can buy good quality ingredients the kids actually want to eat.

All these restrictions do is force kids to take their own food or eat off site.

The standards were so bad at DD’s school if she forgot her packed lunch she would rather have gone hungry.

The puddings are sugar free anyway so what’s the problem with having them every day?

It won't achieve much if children are still eating unhealthy foods outside school. The kind of food we got at school 40-50 years ago would have broken every single one of those rules, yet there was no obesity crisis in the UK. I doubt that everyone was eating super-healthy meals at home, either. The culprits today are

1. Takeaway and especially delivered fast food. This wasn't a habit with people in the late 20th century as it is today, and there was nowhere near the number or variety of outlets offering it.
2. Snacking - much less of it. There wasn't the notion that it was normal to eat between meals.
3. 'Energy drinks' and 'coffees' that are actually confections of syrup and whipped cream.

I'm assuming this doesn't apply to packed lunches with national rule changes? My son has a limited diet due to medical reasons and his packed lunch is just what he will eat which isn't particularly healthy.

I think we are very lucky in this country to put so much care into what our young people eat.

so lucky yet so whingy 😂

@NameChanger2026 what’s wrong with an egg in decent oil?

What school breakfast club has the resources to use "decent" oil? Frying an egg on a non-stick pan with a squirt of 1-cal olive oil spray is not significantly worse than poaching. However a school breakfast club will be using cheap pans and cheap oil and cooking eggs like that degrades the vitamins to make the egg less nutritious, and also affects the cholesterol making it more damaging. Poached or boiled is much healthier for a school breakfast club and there's nothing stopping parents from giving their kid a fried egg at the weekend.