Just been on a school trip and boy,you should have seen the crap that emerged form the lunch boxes....

[moondog]

Fruit Shoots,cheese strings,those cartons of 'meat'(sorry,industrial slurry) and cheese,weird yoghurts that don't need to be refrigerated and have a 'best before' date of 2018.
The healthiest thing was probably a plastic bread sandwich with some sort of processed chicken slice in it.

When I see their little shining faces and strong bodies,exuding energy ,and then see what they are fuelling themselves with,I want to take said cheese strings and garotte their parents.

moondog please dont call it eggplant

thats in my top 10 of bug bears

Rightyo

Aubergine

thank you dear xxx

(i just dont get that eggplant thingy, its nothing to do with eggs! mutter mutter)

I fraternised with too many Americans in my youth.
Shall I start talking about zucchini and fanny packs???

ARGH!

I agree wholemeal pasta is vile if you use it in recipes where white pasta is supposed to be used. But it's OK in its place with the right recipe. (Now trying to think of a recipe it actaully goes with, apart from Moondog's offering)

Blimey - very emotive subject isn't it. Our parents seemed so chilled about food in comparison, I wonder why this is. Do you think it's because we are so very very busy these days, dashing about with work, clubs, social lives etc etc and our actual "time" with our kids is less therefore we feel guilty and solve the guilt by thinking "I'll give them great food instead". "I'll be a perfect mum that way" .

My DD's eat pretty well and I'm not averse to the occasional cheesestring in their lunchbox as long as the rest of their diet that day is good.
This morning my DD dropped her lunch box in the doorway of her classroom, spilling the contents all over the floor. Now if that had been yestserday I wouldn't have minded as she had a brown roll with cheese and houmous, little pot of chopped up fruit, bottle of water and a yoghurt. But this morning it was a hula hoop and cheese string kind of day . Bloody typical.

SB,I think there is just tooooo much choice in every realm of our lives.It tempts yet also freezes us in terror.

Witness any large supermanrket.
Ffs,there must be 60 kinds of yoghurt for sale!

I loved it when we lived in Russia a few years ago.Nobbut two or three brands of butter,cheese,sausage.I found it amazingly liberating to have choice removed.
The only thing available in many variations was vodka.Funny that.

on school trips I do fill my kids lunch boxes with rubbish. and white bread and kinnerton choc is one of the requests.
i do hate cheese strings, everyone seems to be so het up about the sugar in our kids diet,( and lets not forget fruit is full of it BTW, its not healthy to eat a whole bag of grapes) but for me cheese strings are crap. They are so full of salt.
I was appalled when the school meals added cheese and biscuits as pudding alternative because they put a dairylee trangle as a cheese souce.
If you add up a main meal of a crispy highly processed turkey shape / or cheese moon thingy, and have cheese triangle on top a kids salt levels are sky high.
Its the combination of high salt and high refined fats that are part of the rise in diabetes. Even if your children are built like sting beans a high colestrol diet is not good.

Food is a about moderation, and i dont say no every now and then and my kids do get a few sweets . But the list of fruit shoot, fizzy drinks and processed cheese etc are firmly in the high days and holidays.
My kids are pleased if I buy them coco pops for breakfast at christmas!!

I nearly started a similar thread a few weeks ago. I actually asked some of the children if they had special things in the boxes as a school trip treat and most of them said no, they had it every day.

One child in the group I was looking after had one of those dairylea things with the sticks and a chocolate pancake. Another had three jacobs crackers with jam on. One had a packet of crisps, a kitkat and a fruit shoot.

They were on an outdoorsy school trip with lot of physical activity - it didn't seem adequate on any level.

Peer pressure is rotten. Ds1 got teased for eating a cheddar cheese sandwich by a child who was eating a cheesestring and chocolate mousse sandwiches.

mousse sandwiches? FFS! And are these the same wonderful parents who choose to get indignant about the "nanny state" (and wonder why their kid is a bit chubby, can't concentrate and billions of tax-payers money has to be spent on obesity-related illness)?

stomp, stomp
I want a fat tax!

Moondog, I completely agree with you re too much choice - especially when it comes to food. I welcome the variety of food available compared to when I was growing up but at times I find it overwhelming too.

anyone come up with a good reason as to why we cant eat jaffa cakes for breakfast yet?

i hsould think it was obvious nulcat

breakfast of empty calories does bugger all for your energy levels

Blu - I love you, you are so sensible (no trace of irony)

"fat tax"? What an abhorrent idea.

Having spent 10 years making lunchboxes, with attempts at healthy, interesting food, and feding my wormery with what is often returned, this has been a source of useful hints to me!

GS - by fat tax I meant on the food (not the people), just as is done on cigarettes. Not abhorrent at all IMHO. I find it appalling the crap some people choose to eat/feed their children often through ignorance and the fact that it's rammed down their throats by the supermarkets/TV ads. Meanwhile the NHS has to pick up the pieces spending a fortune on treating preventable diseases such as diabetes.. In the name of political correctness we are not able to debate this in public sensibly for fear of offending those who are overweight.

LOL at the idea of taxing fat people.

There's some tory nutter suggesting it I think. He did a programme about it recently

OTOH would be an excellent way to raise money!
Guaranteed long-term income for the exchequer the way we're all eating ourselves silly (as mum would say)

Would also be a huge incentive to take up running again and stop scoffing all the chocolate I'm not virtuously giving to my children.

Moondog

You sound like my dad. I remember when I was a child he was always moaning about the hundreds of 'bouchen' (Italian dialect for bottles) he wes faced with when he wanted to buy shampoo for example. He always cited Russia as a good example where choice was limited. 'You ask for shampoo, you get shampoo' he'd say - none of this messing around. Mind you he had a a real thing about Russia and thought Stalin had his good points !!!

Moondog

You sound like my dad. I remember when I was a child he was always moaning about the hundreds of 'bouchen' (Italian dialect for bottles) he wes faced with when he wanted to buy shampoo for example. He always cited Russia as a good example where choice was limited. 'You ask for shampoo, you get shampoo' he'd say - none of this messing around. Mind you he had a a real thing about Russia and thought Stalin had his good points !!!

oops sorry re two posts