to be fed up with the Government telling me what to eat?

[meltedmarsbars]

Its never-ending, and now school have sent my dc's home with charts to fill in for "healthy eating" targets and "move more" targets, to record for a MONTH how they get on!

Its intrusive and patronising!

How do I tell them to bog off?

I was in the supermarket at lunchtime and saw lots of kids from the nearby comp buying their lunch.Boy in front of me got 2 chocolate bars ,bottle of pepsi,and a pack of chocolate biscuits.Most were buying hot sausage rolls,crisps and most worryingly of all the 2 girls in front of me where buying a 10-calorie jelly and an apple each.

Yes princess there seems to be more eating disorders in girls and obsessin with counting calories and watching their weight than boys

I agree Imsonottelling totally right. Its fineto have what is considered to be 'bad foods' in moderation, but children especially young children will not understand that, if they are told that these foods are bad they will take it literally, since when is cheese bad fgsP. If schools want to educate parents than they should hold sessions in healthy eating for them.

Over here in my local supermarket they have adverts in the fucking trolly saying things along the lines of "make sure your trolly is full of fruit and veg" and I seethe every time I see it.

I also lead a Guide Group and none of the girls are "allowed" any "junk food" (or so they tell me). We made lovely chocolate chip cookies the other week (with organic ponce 80% cocoa chocolate) and they were wolfing them down like..like...like children who had never had a delicious cookie before.

Surely better to have a bit of everything and not make something forbidden, as then when they are able to have free reign over food, they will be keen to try the things they haven't had?

I am fed up with the constant government interfering advice on healthy eating and the packed lunch monitoring is so ridiculous and intrusive that I wont even get started but

I never had an issue with these charts. DS1 always knew more than me about everything and assumed I had never had education or a life before him and he always took notice of what teachers said and enjoyed educating me!

He got a lot out of these things (and 'walk to school week')and enjoyed monitoring what we all ate (and we did eat pretty well anyway!) and as a teenager he still follows habits learnt from then when he was 5. I couldn't have had that effect on my own, and I was a good mum to pfb

It also depends on the school, having had experience of 4 primary schools, how they communicate to parents makes a huge difference.

I saw it as something to back up what I was already doing and was smug that my pfb ds would be top of the class

Completely agree that a dangerous message is coming across if children are being told to never eat sugar or fat. As for a toddler diet being low-fat and laden with aspartame

Mind you, I went to a Mini Mend session the other week at which the exciting new healthy food to try was an orange so clearly some people don't have a clue...

But are children really being told at school to never eat sugar or fat or is this just a massive hysteric overreaction, deliberately misinterpreting what the kids are being taught?

This thread reminds me a bit of the news story when mothers were handing chips over the fence in protest over Jamie's school dinners.

Sad really.

The school doesn't have more infuence than me Riven but dd1 is a funny little bugger and takes everything to heart.

Once she gets an idea into her head its very hard for her to shake it.

Her grandmother not my mother thankfully was also making comments to dd at the time about her body, and what she ate, cooments about her teeth and so on and it made dd very self concious.

the govt interference on this issue of healthy eating with schools pisses me right off - its the biggest bug bear i have actually.

i find not having a telly does away with all the added pressure - i go round to SIls house and its on all the bloody adverts too.

I think the Govt and schools are too heavy-handed with their level of "interference" - but they are trying to address the obesity issues, that are increasing steadily in children, teens and adults.

Would you rather they just let everyone (including the ignorant) get on with it? That US website might be horrifying but I know people who have weight issues themselves who feed their DC low fat/low sugar (i.e. containing artificial sweeteners) foods because that's what they're having.

It is a Western-worldwide problem - something has to be done about it, I would advocate SENSIBLE teaching about the value of whole foods (including cheese!), without the demonising of food groups - but that will still leave a whole generation of children who are under the influence of poorly-educated parents.

If you are already educated and feeding your DC sensibly, then that's great - but don't take these things to heart or be offended, be grateful that the Govt is trying to free up the NHS resources for other things than obesity-related diseases in a few years time.

widowwadman have you seen the suggested packed lunch menus? They are very telling - there is no way their suggestions will have the desired effect - as i mentioned earlier I think it is unlikely that people who are sending their kids in with really awful packed lunches are suddenly going to start rustling up 3 bean salads... Why not just suggest buying half n half bread and putting in some cherry toms? But no that would be too obvious...

The evidence of this happening is purely anecdotal (on MN) but I don't find it hard to believe that adults are passing their neuroses onto children. Most primary school teachers are women AFAIK, and most women I know have some bizarre and incorrect ideas about food, and most follow faddish diets. And are hung up about cake and biscuits and things, with a "good food" and "bad food" attitude. So why the surprise that when the govt tell teachers to concentrate on healthy eating some weird messages are coming out.

I like the idea, it would be nice to get a bit of praise for the hard work I put into my kids diets

Can't really see that it's offensive, and it might just help families that don't have a clue about healthy eating.

You don't have to take the advice, like if you don't smoke you don't have to pay attention to the stop smoking adverts, should they stop because people that don't smoke are fed up with being told not to?

YABU

hang on, we're mumsnet. Can't you just send back the sheet with the menu plan stapled to it? You do have a menu plan, right?

and for the 'move more' target, attach the household chores rota showing "loading washing machine" and "tidying toys" exercise routines for DC?

The website was babycenter, but I can't find the specific article to save my life, of course!!!

I used to make lunchboxes for my 8yo charge and was once told that the 3 or four chocolate smartie button things in her lunchbox were forbidden as they were sweets and not biscuits (which were allowed chocolate on them). No comment on the rest of her lunch which, every single day for the year I was there, included a different type of 'main' (hummus or sandwiches or pasta, etc), two portions of fruit, a portion of veg and a 'sweet treat' which was usually some fruit bar or homemade treat (for some reason my cooking skills are brilliant in the sweet section ).

Schools are going ott these days but it's understandable. Having volunteered at the same school I understand why they told me off for the smartie knock-offs! So many of the kids there came in only jam sandwiches, a pack of crisps and a pack of jelly sweets and/or chocolate bar.

I think that looking at bento boxes is brilliant inspiration of things to put in lunchboxes. The idea of a basic bento (according to some sources) is a 4-3-2-1 system. 4 parts starch, 3 parts side dish/proteins, 2 parts veg and 1 part sweet. There's also the colour bento system too which is cool but I'm rubbish at that

I might be wrong on this but i doon't think that people 'don't know' and don't understand'. I don't like all this 'we must educate the thick ones because they cost money on NHS'.

I only know few families with very bad diet. All of them have long term untreated depression. Depression is huge in this country. And the most common symptom is not taking care of yourself, to the point of not having shower let alone producing those clever recomended lunchboxes.

So maybe the goverment should target the real big issue rather than the symptom and leave alone the kids who have normal diets without pushing them into eating disorders.

Every time I read a thread like this I get really depressed, and actually quite concerned about the problems we are going to have when my DD starts school in September.
It has taken one hell of a lot of work to get her eating properly, and she is fed according to advice from a proper dietician, someone who actually knows about what kids need to eat and how to avoid eating disorders in the future. And it all gets undone when she starts school by the sounds of things.

I agree with what others have said, obviously parents need advice on how to feed their children properly, but the way in which it is being done is just going to encourage eating disorders, particularly in girls.

I've been thinking about what I would do if I got asked to do this by my DD's school; I know that I am going to have the same problem in the future.

I would fill in the charts myself at home, with as little involvement from DD as possible as I really don't want her becoming obsessed. I would leave out anything we had eaten that I thought might be frowned on at school, to avoid DD being told that she doesn't have a healthy diet by a teacher. I wouldn't refuse to get involved because this would just make things awkward for my DD at school.

I would write a letter to the school explaining my concerns, but expect it to be ignored as schools don't have much option but to do these activities.
I would also ask that the teacher fill in the charts as well, so the kids can see that although the teacher is saying that certain foods are bad for them, even the teacher sometimes eats them (although there is a good chance that the teacher would do the same as me and leave a lot of things off the chart)!

I don't understand why schools can't just:

• hammer home the 5-a-day thing
• recommend that wholegrain stuff is better for you but that even white bread, rice and pasta is good for you and a better choice than chips with everything. But even then that chips now and again have their place - they are made from potatoes after all which are not the devil's food, and can be oven=baked using sunflower oil.
• tell the children that a small amount of fat is actually GOOD for you, especially olive oil tye of fats, as kids are growing and need the energy, but that fatty food ALL THE TIME is bad.

It's the last one that I think is particularly needed. DS who is six is naturally skinny, but has a reasonable diet. (could do with more portions of fruit but anyway.....) He is always coming home saying "Is cheese bad for you?" And I tell him that it's got protein and calcium and vitamins in it and the reason why those are good things, but I can tell that he's unsure as to whether it's "good" or not, as he's obviously been told in school that it's fatty = bad. FGS, he could DO with the calories!! If he had to have fruit as a snack all the time he would be even more of a skeleton than he already is.

Bit of a waffly post, but I just think that if schools want to teach kids about nutrition they should get a proper nutritionist/dietician in who knows what they're talking about.

Curly
Who says white bread is better than chips ?

YANBU

This all makes me so angry

I think it's ridiculous that the govt are trying to control our/dc's diets in this way. As others have said it is unlikely to make much difference to those families that really do have a shocking diet. Anyway I would rather my dc's ate jam sandwiches than nothing (my dc's wouldn't eat jam sandwiches but YKWIM).

My 2 older dc's are both still at nursery- they are 4 and 3 and in the same pre-school nursery class. The nursery always does a healthy snack consisting of something like apple slices and a biscuit/tomato soup/beans on toast/cereal/cracker and cheese and pepper sticks.

However, since Christmas the school has decided to become a 'healthy eating school' which now means that they are not allowed to have cake when it is someone's birthday (usually parent's bring in a cake to share between the 30 or so kids) and now snack seems mainly to consist of fruit/veg and nothing else and I don't think they will be baking anymore at nursery which they only did rarely but made things like banana biscuits or crispie cakes.

Just makes me SO SO SO mad- so the message is basically that cake is bad and you can't even have it as a treat when it is a birthday. These are NURSERY children of 3 and 4

Last year I saw a dietician as dd1 is very small and doesn't put weight on quickly depite eating constantly- I told her pretty much everything that dd eats, including quite a lot of unhealthy stuff (i.e. packet of crisps everyday/chocolate bar everyday). She said that dd had a good diet with all food groups present and no need to change anything (except include more puddings etc!)

Luckily, ds (4) is very sensible and has a great understanding of healthy/unhealthy and that most unhealthy things are only bad if you eat too much of it and not enough healthy stuff.

I am worried though that they will become food obsessed, particularly the dds, just because of it being a constant topic at school.

correct good quality info for kids is fine, encouraging them to log every item not so fine.

I am also a bit irritated by the healthy school lunches ideology too - as eg. a cheese sandwich on wholegrain, plus apple plus fruit juice would be unsatisfactory - as you should include an alternative protein source and veg as well as fruit.

Yes Riven, you are right but education is not forcing people to do something etc it is about informing people of the facts and helping them to make healthier choices.