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?

When my DD brought one of these home from school, she insisted on eating extra crisps, chocolate, etc, just so she could put them on the chart! They also sent them home over half term, so her swimming, dancing, kick boxing, etc was not included in the exercise!

HSMM - maybe we should do that!

The forms my dc's brought home had a food column for us to put our "achievable" targets, eg, reduce crisps from a packet a day to 3 a week.

We don't even eat crisps 3 times a week! The inference and assumption is that our diet NEEDS to be improved - that is what I really object to.

Our diet does NOT need to be improved!

So how should the govt be targeting those whose diet does need improving?

meltedmarsbars am that they have included achievable targets.

That takes it out of just filling it in for interest/a project/whatever and into somthing entirely different.

Rive -agree re anorexia being complex illness. However it's more subtle than that, the thing that worries me. Which is that all of this sets up a good food/bad food "naughty treat" mentality, which is exactly teh sort of attitude that yoyo dieters etc often have, and it is not a happy way to be. My DH has this attitude - from his upbringing - he sees certain foods as "rewards" and "nice" and craves them, and "healthy" foods as something boring which you have to eat a bit but it's a real bind. He can't just enjoy a range of food, and appreciate each sort for its own flavour and texture etc. And hankers after cake and chocolate and things. He is V fat and I can see it stems from this relationship. Also listening to women at work who diet - all this "ooooh shall I have another biscuit? It's 2 points though - shall I have another one? I really shouldn't... Maybe I will Oh go on then" with this thing of people either feeling deprived if they don't have it, or "failing" if they do have it.

It is this sort if thing that I think the current approach fosters. "Banning" foods eg cheese and evebn crisps sets up this situation with those foods, making them desirable yet naughty. which is bad.

They need to teach them about what a balanced diet includes, and that a little bit of what youfancy won't do any harm, and everything in moderation.

Not fruit = good cheese = bad. Full stop.

there is no such thing as an unhealthy food just an unhealthy diet.

TotalChaos: your example packed lunch would also fail to be healthy because of the fruit juice. An acceptable drink is milk or water.

Thatsnotmymonster: sounds like you have been in a similar situation to us. I never thought a dietician would tell us to feed our dd crisps and chocolate. What she did explain to us though was that if you label a food as being a treat it just becomes more desirable. My dd is now the only child I know who can refuse the offer of chocolate, or be given a choice of crisps or fruit and choose the fruit. She understands that we eat different foods at different times of day, so she would never ask for chocolate for breakfast for example, but she doesn't see some food groups as more desirable than others.

The only people I know who keep track of (as in writing it down) their daily intake have ED's. And there really shouldn't be a good food/bad food divide. Unless it's this is edible/this is poisonous.

Well, that's another thing that bugs me, CookieMonster2. The whole "fruit juice is BAAAD" idea. What a load of bollocks. It's only "bad" because the acid in say, orange juice has the potential to cause damage to tooth enamel. I'd say it would - if a child were to sip on a little bit every 20 mins or so through the day. If they're having one carton of pure orange juice at the same time as eating their packed lunch all in one sitting, then I cannot possibly fathom where the problem is with this. There are GOOD things in orange juice, FGS! Vitamin C. Some children are fussy with regards to eating fruit so fruit juice would be a valuable source of vitamin C for them. With the news last year that scurvy is increasing in children, then I really think we have to use our common sense in these things and not just blindly listen to every single thing that is listed as "bad" about a food, otherwise the more hysterical among us have a tendency to ban our children eating them all together .

The same with raisins and other dried fruits. Warnings have been given out in the past couple of years about how raisins and other dried fruits can get stuck in teeth and cause damage. Cue your average DM reader suddenly stopping their kids from eating ANY dried fruit snacks. Dried apricots have fantastic nutritional properties and to say they are "baaaad" is just maaaaaad.

Let's just not get all DM about this issue - most of us on here are full of common sense and know that "everything in moderation" is a good mantra.

Ooh it makes me mad - all this, the more I think of it.

I don't have a problem with schools educating on healthy eating as long as they get their facts right.

TBH some parents need serious help - last week we had to send notes home with a couple children whose lunchboxes contained the day before's leftovers with that day's lunch (such as it was) shoved in on top. And some of the boxes haven't seen a damp cloth or a bit of soapy water in a long time. I wouldn't put my dog's dinner in them never mind my child's.

Coca cola doesn't serve any nutritional purpose.

It is yum though...

calories and fluids are the body's 2 most immediate needs.My doctor told me to drink flat cola when I had hyperemesis

Woohoo!!!!

ISNT, even Coca Cola contains water and so will provide hydration.

The govt healthy eating advice is being steadily challenged now. Yes we have more children and adults who are overweight, but it seems that the official advice may actually have to shoulder some of the blame.

There is NO evidence that saturated fats do in fact lead to heart attacks. The official advice was simply based on a study that people with high cholesterol had fewer heart attacks when taking anticholesterol drugs. Not the same thing at all.

It is surely no coincidence that heart attacks began to rise after WW2 when the artificial substances began to be added to food.

And the justification for eating low-fat food is often restricted to the "gram for gram, fat contains more calories than carbohydrates". Like, you'd eat 100g of fat at one meal?

If I fed my dcs with the amount of carbohydrates at each meal as recommended, they would soon be fat, they simply can't eat so much. But they have a healthy diet, with all food groups and are not quite as fussed about sweets as some kids I could name, probably because I've always allowed some in their diets.

At the parties I've held for dcs, it often seems to be the ones whose parent are fully into the health kick (no sweets, crisps, etc, etc) who are the first to dive into the biscuits/cakes/crisps I set out.

So in general I home-cook from scratch as much as I can (freezing as well to save time), using natural stuff with as few additives as possible. However, I do allow "naughty stuff" because I don't want the kids getting food hang-ups.

I make the decision, not the school.

Agree ILove. This idea that you can eat as much carb as you like as long as you eat less fat is bollocks frankly. Carbs still end up as fat if you sit on the xbox all day do bugger all exercise.

Rather than target parents and dcs i would prefer that the govt did something about the food manufacturers who produce such crap food.

Do our supermarkets really need to be filled with aisles of food with chemicals added. We don't really need them and they don't taste particularly good.

Also agree with the good/bad food thing leading to issues with food and ED and yo yo dieting.

unlikely with home-cooked food, but with processed pizza/pie/curry followed by cream cake or cheesecakes or donuts, could very easily get up to 50g in one meal I reckon.

My grilled bacon and poached eggs breakfast is one of the best things you have can have but I doubt any school would agree but that doesn't bother me.

I remebmer in the 1970s we had to list food in biology for I think a week or may be a few days and my mother gave us pigeon and fresh crab and foods we had a bout once a month not every week so it would look interesting at school.

If we imposed massive taxes on all junk foods (I don't eat any junk food and just drink tap water) it might help. I am sure it helps at my children's school that you're not allowed packed lunch and that is up to age 13 when the school ends so everyone has a hot meal with lots of choice.

No child has to fill in these surveys of course.

Oh yes that's my perfect healthy breakfast.

Grill the bacon, poach the eggs, and i don't like butter so plain toast, delicious nutritious and healthy.

Make it wholemeal bread and chuck in a grilled tomato or 2 and it's saintly.

Riven we made muffins yesterday (i never bake TBH) and it was 110g fat and that was a massive wedge of butter, I'd never use anything like that in my normal cooking.

You'd have to be going at the puddings to get up to 100g in a meal surely. Even cheese is only about 1/3 fat.

I made some "healthy" AK pineapple muffins today with DS and they were rank (maybe cos I had to use olive oil, not veg oil?!) Should have gone to Greggs for a Yum Yum and Fruit Shoot instead! Joking aside, everyone seems to be treated like an idiot regarding healthy eating, whereas its all common sense and everything in moderation, surely?!

I have a handful of brown rice with the bacon and eggs. People need enough brown carb. It's no use just having protein of you won't get the right seratonin etc levels in your brain to be happy etc.

The pigeon and crab was just my mother in the 1970s trying to look as if we had interesting food at home for the purposes of the curiosity of the biology teacher. We used to like being given the crabs legs and hair clips at the table whilst she got it ready but I think she and my father had the middle bit of the crab for themselves on sandwiches at tea time.

It is not hard to eat basic healthy meals on a low budget. First of all adopt my policy of only drinking tap water. You'll save a fortune. I am lucky that I never liked hot drinks or alcohol though. It takes weeks to get yourself off addictions.

Secondly don't think healthy foods take ages to cook. It takes about 2 minutes to open a can of tuna, heat brown rice up in the microwave and to peel one raw carrot, then back to my desk to earn £x? per hour, much more fun than hours over a stove.

I don't count anything but I think if you have at each meal a handful of basic protein, a handful of brown carb and a handful of veg those are pretty good proportions. Tinned sardines is another one that doesn't cost much and tastes good too. Even my 11 year old can cook himself a baked potato in the microwave and defrost a chicken piece and cook it . He slices cucumber on it. I don't that's too expensive although may be the chicken is. I don't really have to look at the price of food but I don't waste money. Always make a point of buying caged eggs etc.