T think that a piece of cake is not fruit or veg, really?

[Clary]

Our school has a healthy snacks policy where parents are asked to send in a fruit or veg snack four days a week - then if they like they can send in a treat (eg enormous chocolate bar) on the final day.

So what could you send...apple, banana, pear, carrots, raisins, cucumber, tomatoes, dried apricots, School Bar, smoothie, grapes, strawberries, satsuma, orange, buttered malt loaf ... oh no hang on that's cake isn't it?

I got a bit peeved when I saw that was what a few of the children in the class I have been helping in were bringing.

I guess you are all going to post saying why does it matter, and the truth is it doesn't, not really, not to me directly. But surely it is an easy way for parents to promote a healthy snack (personal bugbear of mine), plus it's a pain if yr DC moans about carrots when "X gets cake at snack time" - plus, y'know, why can't parents do as they are asked?

I know, I know, it's the end of a busy week and I am a bit overtired. Just need a moan I guess.

i dont get this at all tbh. my dd4 is on a high calorie diet. what she needs would be banned in some schools. what is healthy for her isnt for someone else. why are we getting the one size does all thing with food .
does the gov not trust the people to feed themselves appropriately? . fed up gov . stop dictating by stealth. in the schools ffs!

Does that mean the slice of lime in my G&T doesn't count towards my 5 a day either?

nope wubbly fraid not.

depends if carrot cake

seriously i understand why you are annoyed,but unless tecahers take away the cake/loaf etc then nothing you can do

much easier for schools to previde a fruit snack each day

"It's bread the clue is in the loaf bit"

No, that simply refers to the type of tin that the cake is baked in. Or would you classify Nigella Lawson's chocolate loaf as a bread .

I was under the impression that all foods have a natural amount of sugar in them.

I try my hardest to feed my family a varied healthy, balanced diet, as part of our diet we diffrent types of bread, pitta, wraps etc

One of the types of bread we eat is Hovis's Granary Original, on the list of ingredients, it says caramelised sugar?

I also use a Morphy Richards bread maker, It comes with a small recipe book all the recipes have sugar in them, depending on the size loaf you make, up to 3 tbs or sugar/

Mandy - it's not essential to put sugar in home made bread. it tastes delicious without it. My mom always taught me to put in 1/2 or 1/3 of the amount of sugar called for in recipes for treats, too. Dh loves the brownies I make and has never noticed
I'm a label reader at the supermarket and I generally try to buy things with little or no sugar. But it's not the devil A little sugar is ok!

Well if they are allowed school bars of which the ingrediants are:

Concentrated Apple Purée (an average of 222g of apple used to prepare 100g of school bars®), Dehydrated Apple (28%), Maltodextrin, Oligofructose, Vegetable Oil, Concentrated Strawberry Juice (1.5%), Apple Extract Concentrate (1.5%), Pear Juice Concentrate (1%), Gelling Agent (Pectin), Natural Colour (Anthocyanins), Natural Flavouring, Malic Acid, Preservative (Sulphur Dioxide)

Then i think a good quality malt loaf should be ok

Yes I agree with littleducks - malt loaf better than school bar.

And waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more scrummy

I do find it irritating that schools are so hung up on healthy eating but unless any school is psychic, they have NO idea what a child's overall diet is. They are seeing a small sample of what a child eats.

My dd has the hot dinners by choice, my ds has packed lunches. It's all healthy stuff (and boy, he does love cherry tomatoes), but I do add a small treat.

Malt loaf isn't fruit or vegetable. But it has now gone on my shopping list

Only eating fruit or veg is not healthy for children. Children need quite a high level of calories for their portion size and I agree with drloves8 (again) that the Government should not be interfering with children's diets the way they are in schools. Fine if they want to improve school dinners but not fine to take something out of a lunchbox that the parent has prepared for the child. If they are really concerned they should talk to the parents as confiscating food is only going to make the parent give more treats at home.

What this school is doing is marginally better because it is an incentive-ish scheme rather than a confiscating scheme. I agree that schools need to consider individual pupil's diets and should also know what is healthy for children and what isn't. Malt loaf is not unhealthy not many things are really unhealthy. What I really dislike is this fruit/veg is 'healthy' message - fruit/veg is not 'healthy'. Eating a balanced diet and exercising is healthy and children do need much more fat/calories proportionally than adults do.

YANBU in that malt loaf isn't fruit or veg,but it is 14% raisins,and low in fat,so isn't bad as a snack.I guess if the school has the policy they should enforce it but I'm not sure it's worth them fighting a battle over.School bars sound revolting!

And Wubbly ,I think the lime in your G&T does count(a bit) - I'm sure I've read a study which had found health benefits linked to gin drinking which they thought was related to the lemon/lime slice -unlikely as that sounds!

YABU for picking up on malt loaf but not school bars. Only just found out what they are (thank you littleducks their site was down yesterday) and they sound grim.

School says fruit or veg, then send them in with fruit or veg. Who on earth when faced with that instruction would think "apple? no. banana? no. grapes? no. school bar or malt loaf? perfect"

Malt loaf is cake in this context. The manufacturers might make all sorts of nutritional claims for it but they would, wouldn't they?

I've been craving malt loaf since this thread was started and have just made some. I'm not sure it's very healthy as it's got a fair bit of sugar in but it was YUMMY.

TBH this sort of thing sounds like border-line food fascism to me. I approve of the idea that where school dinners are provided they should be healthy. But frankly when it comes to the contents of lunch boxes and snacks then it is simply none of the school's business. IMO

Of course there will be some parents who feed their kids on crap and never give them fresh fruit. But I don't see that it is up to the school to stick their oar in.

[I can feel a nanny-state rant coming on...]

Jeez, "School Bars" sound like something invented by the Ministry of Food. Like "Woolton Pies" and other wartime horrors.

(No. I do not have personal recollections of WW2)

No, Mandy, all foods don't have sugar in. Sure, you can put sugar in bread, but you don't need it. It's the same with bought-in sauces. Yes, you can make tomato sauce with a tablespoon of sugar, but why would you? Not that this really has a lot to do with the thread, but I'm a bit stunned that people don't know what are basic bread ingredients and what are optional extras.

Oh, and thank goodness someone else pointed out that what makes something a loaf is the tin you bake it in, not the ingredients.

(I thought the sugar was important in bread as it fed the yeast??? Thats what they taught me at school)

School bars look so unappetising! Perhaps some children won't eat anything unless it's in a wrapper.

Imsonottelling "School says fruit or veg, then send them in with fruit or veg. Who on earth when faced with that instruction would think "apple? no. banana? no. grapes? no. school bar or malt loaf? perfect" "

well quite - that's what I was trying to say

I don't like school bars either, was just trying to avert the "but my child won't eat any fruit or veg" brigade

It's hardly food fascism is it? The school just requests that parents send in a fruit or veg snack four days out of five - I simply find it amazing that a number of parents seem to think this means biscuits or fruit loaf. But there you go.

Should add that no-one's grabbing it out of the kids' hands or anything.

hmmm, actually 5foot5 I agree with you. I'm a teacher. Our school suggests that parents pack healthy snacks. While I think it's important that children have proper nutrition, I also very strongly believe that parents pack for their kids what they want them to eat and that is none of my business or anyone else's business.
It is a big reason that I don't allow my primary students to share snacks - because each parent packs for their child what they want them to eat. It's not my place to decide that actually they can have jimmy's slice of cake instead of their apple because they fancied a trade. (they aren't allowed to bring anything in that any child in the class is allergic to for safety reasons).
True, if they decide to have school lunch, then school decides what they eat... but a packed lunch - I have to wholeheartedly agree with you 5foot5.

littleducks - I think Mandy's talking about added sugar. If you make bread, you don't need to add sugar to the flour/water/yeast mix. You need a warm place for it though.

Well fruit and veg certainly have sugar in.

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything though