Mumsnet Consultation Panel: opinions requested on School Food Policy

[rustybear]

The junior school I work at is currently creating a new food policy, and we're asking parents their views particularly on issues such as whether sweets/and/or cakes should be sold at charity sales, PTA events etc and whether children should be allowed to bring in sweets etc to distribute on their birthday. (We already ban all nuts & allow only 'healthy' snacks at playtime. We have a resource for ASD children, and are able to make separate arrangements for SN children if necessary.)
I thought that mumsnet views would be interesting and helpful.....

Sweets/cakes at charity sales, PTA events, school discos etc - YES

Bringing in small choc bar or sweet on birthdays - YES

I think it's quite right to ban crap in school lunches, i.e. crisps, fruit shoots etc. Schools should be leading the way and teaching children about nutrition and healthy eating imo.

Cake sales mostly raise tuppence ha'penny but I don't see the harm in them (wrt cakes, what I tihnk about PTAs is another thread). Cakes are nice, most people wouldn't dispute that. I don't buy them much because on the whole they're full of nasty hydrogenated crap and so I'd rather make them but I really don't object to cake sales. Neither do I object to sweets sometimes being handed out on birthdays but I think parents ought to know thatif your child is veggie it's annoying if they're handed Haribo, which are full of gelatine and you have to then either take them away or let your vegetarian child eat ground up cows hooves.

Btw, although I am a bit of a food fascist, i.e. I don't have crap in the house (very, very rarely buy crisps and if I do it's Wotsits which aren't that bad), I don't buy cakes, but do bake; do buy organic ice cream and 70% cocoa chocolate and Haribo or other sweets sometimes for my children as a treat. I make lurid pink iced cakes for my daughter too.

I guess I think school is not home and while the odd thing is fine, generally crap should be banned as part of a main meal (i.e. school lunches).

lol at WWW (hello!!!! So good to have you back.) trying to justify her Wotsit fetish.

I was really pissed off at schools i worked in snootily turning up their nose at the bottles and bottles of Vodka dh and i were coming home with when we were working on and off in Russia.

Gah,who would choose a 'hamper' full of Spam and value beans over that????

I would rather the school didn't allow sweets to be handed out on birthdays, because so many people don't want their children to have them for one reason or another - for DS1 it's intolerances, for others it's vegetarian issues - I suspect DS2's hives last night may have been brought on by new, no artificial anything Smarties.

There are loads of children in DS2's class with before Christmas birthdays, and DS2 is coming home with junk most days, and I have to explain why DS1 can't have anything. But if DS2 keeps coming out in hives we will be banning all junky stuff anyway.

I don't count crisps as junk because the ones my kids have are just potatoes, sunflower oil and salt - so while they are not particularly healthy, as a once a week treat I consider them acceptable.

I don't like sweets being bandied about on birthdays. The kids come home with them and want to scoff them all just before tea! And some of the sweets are really gross, boiled sweets that I ban because I'm scared stiff of dd or ds choking on them, bubblegum which is also banned for the same reason and Nestle sweets, banned again because they come from a capitalist murdering company!

But then I'm a killjoy by nature and don't want to go sweet shopping when it's dd's birthday!

I dislike sweets, but have no problems with cakes, biscuits and chocolate being handed out for birthdays, especially if they're handed out as the children go home, so the parents can decide whether the stuff may be eaten immediately or is to be kept for pudding (which is what we normally do). Ds1's school banned cakes on birthdays and allowed only individual portions (eg fairy cakes or biscuits) to make it easier to distribute them and for the parents to control.

I think it's unrealistic to ban everything, and jsut makes 'bad' stuff more attractive.

I don't see why sweets ever need to be given out

they are just crap as Rhubarb says

why do we give our children crap food that we wouldn't eat ourselves?

Cakes and chocolate, yes, sure, why not? That is actual food, made of real ingredients.

Same opinion over sales etc - chocs, biscuits, cakes ok, sweets not.

the haribou type sweets you are talking about are often given out because they are nut/egg/milk/gluten free so generally satsify most allergy problems (even though no doubt they are crammed full of E numbers)

besides, I do actually eat sweets on top of a fairly balanced diet and I'm sure the children see me eat the odd sweet

Yes, unfortunately, it's the E-numbers that do it for us. As someone once said "You can't please all of the people all of the time." (Did someone once say that?)

You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time

think it was good old Abe Lincoln?

cakes at charity sales etc - yes.
sweets/cakes at birthdays - definately no to sweets, but wouldn't mind cake if a) they only allowed it if it was suitable for all the children in the class b) they had it after lunch not given as they leave school - because then I get the battle of they can't eat it before tea and I don't mind a bit of cake after the meal. In theory the school doesn't like treats in on birthdays - but we are only told that once, so it is happening more.

Also why do you ban all nuts ? Is this because there is actually a child with a problem or for some other reason. I ask because they have this policy at the dss school but as far as I know there isn't actually a child with nut allergy and it isn't properly enforced anyway. ds1 used to have a milk and egg allergy (which he has fortunately outgrown) and in nursery there were sometimes problems with milk being spilt on him, but I never suggested they ban it. But they always have the nut ban in place. I have suggested that they explain in a newsletter why they have the ban to get a better rate of compliance if it is important - and explain exactly what they mean by no nuts - do they mean pine nuts (I assume not) what about sesame seeds - lots of nut allergies seem to also include these. Can we send products that may contain nuts (everyone does - even the canteen). For the vast majority of children nuts are a pretty good snack and I don't think there should be a blanket ban without a reason.

Yes, we do have, not only a child, but also a TA, with a severe nut allergy, and we do explain in newsletters that 'all types' of nuts should not be brought to school - I've certainly never heard of any parents objecting. In fact, the ban has been in place for several years and stays even if we don't know of any allergic children, as our first experience was with a girl who was not known to have an allergy having a reaction to the icing that the children were putting on the christmas cakes they'd made.