new policy at nursery to allow preschoolers to help themselves to crackers and fruit all day

[cungryhatterpillar]

Dd's nursery have just introduced this policy. My gut reaction is that it is crazy - the children will fill themselves up and not eat properly at meals. And grazing all day is bad for dental health, particularly fruit (including dried fruit) and starchy crackers and rice cakes which stick to teeth.

I am aware that I could be unreasonable about this as I come from a cultural tradition where snacking is seen as unhealthy and everyone eats three main meals and kids have a light meal after school too. Elderly ladies will tell you off for feeding your toddler rice cakes at the playground and the idea of eating bread sticks in the supermarket makes me shudder... so I am aware I don't have the same view as most people in UK.

Is this nursery policy sensible? Is there any advice against it? Or am I being a bit oversensitive on this?

I totally agree with you, but unfortunately, around our way at least, it's something that OFSTED have been looking at as a real positive (and criticising if you don't do) for the last few years. Nursery are caught between a rock and a hard place.

I agree with all your reasons, but would also add that sitting down together at snack (and meal) times is a fantastic opportunity to learn social skills and to aid language development, both missing from a 'graze whenever you want' system.

I'd also add in that I think the whole routine of the children washing their hands before eating is also a good thing to encourage / teach little ones, so it becomes automatic, which won't happen if they can just go and pick at things.

You are definitely not being oversensitive, indeed, I suspect most of the Nursery staff will agree with you.

I am a snacker by nature, I get really hungry if I don't eat often but I can't eat large amounts in one go. If you go by bf on demand babies eat extremely often and it's a big ask to go from that to three meals a day. My DD ate every 2-3 hours until very recently (3yo now) or she got very cranky. So it would not bother me and I did at home what your nursery is doing, e.g. Fruit and veg available all day long.

Snacking on fruit constantly is terrible for teeth. OFSTED have been promoting this kind of thing for years, but I totally disagree with it. A friend of mine is a senior paedeatric dietician (involved with work on child obesity etc) and she is dead against it. She was roped in to speak to OFSTED when the local preschool was inspected and had refused to implement this recommendation.